Exhibition: La Jonquera, doorway to exile

Exhibition: La Jonquera, doorway to exile 

From February 13 to June26, 2016 

Hall MUME 

The Memorial Museum of the Exile of La Jonquera presents from February 13 to June 26, 2016 the exhibition La Jonquera, gate of exile. This exhibition, produced by the Friends of the MUME Association and curated by Miquel Serrano, MUME's conservative, is a visual and documentary tour of the Jonquera-El Portús border stage during the weeks of January and February 1939 in which the great republican exodus took place due to the definitive occupation of the Catalan territory by the Francoist troops. Also, the exhibition deals with the first years of the postwar period, when La Jonquera became an area blocked and militarized by a dictatorship similar to the Axis powers and afraid of a possible invasion promoted by the allies. The exhibition, next to the information provided by the panels that have been prepared and the documentation and small objects that are collected, presents an audiovisual presentation with a selection of testimonies about exile and the border.

Since the fall of Barcelona on January 26, 1939, in the hands of "national" troops, the main roads leading north have been filled with as much of the retiring republican military personnel as of a A considerable number of civilians of all kinds sought to escape the repressive order promptly instituted by the new dictatorial regime led by General Franco.

The border crossing of La Jonquera-El Portús became the main objective of the crowd, who did not want to succumb to the ruin of those last days of the war in Catalonia. Reaching La Jonquera meant crossing the border and avoiding the constant captivity and bombing of Italian and German aircraft.

The massive influx of refugees collapsed - as did other border crossings - La Jonquera. The Republican retirement took the form of a biblical exodus, leaving a recognizable physical trace on the territory, as well as a significant emotional impact on the people. Many of the images shown in the exhibition, especially those taken by photographers accompanying the occupying troops, show the magnitude of an event that has left an indelible mark on the imagination of the people of La Jonquera.

At the same time, the exhibition also takes stock of what the civil conflict meant in what was then a small border town. The violence of the Republican rear, the Junker youths mobilized on the fronts, the dead in the war, the families of the Jonquera exiled, the Francoist repression on the population, the everyday life of the first post-war period in a hyper-militarized area, the Francoist fortification of the border, are also some of the questions that this exhibition raises.

The local perspective of the exhibition has just been completed by the presentation of an audio-visual montage that contains excerpts of interviews made with various Jonkers who experienced in their own skin those painful days due to the humanitarian crisis that was going on. lead to the Republican withdrawal.

La Jonquera, the door to exile, seeks to contribute, in the exhibition area, to the understanding of an event of first-rate historical rupture that has marked the town of La Jonquera in the course of the 20th century and today. . The History of the Events and the Memory of the inhabitants of La Jonquera come together in this exhibition, which aims to show, from a local perspective, the way that the "great History" has an impact on the lives of specific people and territories.

Organised by : MUME and Association Friends of the MUME 

With the support of the weekly review HORANOVA.