Exilio de dentro

“Spain has declared 2006 as the Year of Historic Memory. While the socialist government opened 600 mass graves where 30 thousands bodies are buried, several leaders of the right wing opposition party claim not to rock the boat. In the name of national reconciliation, people in Spain came to an “oblivion pact”: the silence surrounding republicans’ deaths survived Franquism and the amnesty signed in 1977 actually spawned unpunishment. The civil society made a stand against the oblivion pact: the Association for the Recovery of Historic Memory founded by Emilio Silva in 2000, was the first important step. Important especially for survivors, for those who did not choose the geographical exile, but who live day by day the “exilio de dentro”, the inner exile, made of silence and fear. Important also for their offsprings, those who today unbury the dead ones. Mas de las Matas, Aragon; Pozos de Caudé, Teruel; Turanzas, in the Asturias, these are the places, where the number of the dead is sometimes just the number of the killing blows heard by a shepherd who to took note of each shot on paper; places where it has been decided that giving name to the dead  is as important as unburying corpses; where it has been understood that narrating what happened is pivotal, because memory risks disappearance along with the last witnesses. Therefore, unbury the dead becomes the only way to bury the pain. My project has been of narrating the memories of those who, still children, have lived through the tragedy of losing family members; memories which translate in expressions on their faces, visualized through landscape, to those scenarios theatre of those events. Honouring the defeated by telling the story from the side of the winners as well, since I am convinced that in a Civil War defeated and winners are both victims of a shared feeling, honouring one’s own country.”
 

Manon Moreau