Exhibition: Vides errants: Postguerres i exilis dels germans Pi i Sunyer

Exhibition: Wandering lives. Post-war and exiles of the Pi i Sunyer brothers 

Inauguration: Saturday, March, 11, 2017 

Exhibition from March 11 to July 2, 2017 

The title of the exhibition, “Wandering Lives. Post-war and exile of the Pi and Sunyer brothers ”, it evokes in a clear way what the republican defeat in the Spanish Civil War meant in the Pi i Sunyer family - as it also happened to many other people. It is the beginning of a difficult journey for these three brothers, representatives - with their respective families - of a prepared and cultured middle class that had embraced the Republican project. August Pi i Sunyer, renowned physiologist and professor at the University of Barcelona, ​​Santiago Pi i Sunyer, also a prestigious physiologist and professor at the University of Zaragoza, and Carles Pi i Sunyer, career engineer and prominent politician, embody the vivid image of 'enlightened men who had committed themselves to progress in all spheres of society of their time. August and Santiago, with their university work, devoted themselves to science. Carles, unlike his brothers, devoted his life to politics and held positions of great responsibility during the Republican era in both the peace period and the war. The latter will be, among others, president of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya between 1933 and 1935, member of the Spanish Parliament and will hold various important positions as Minister of Labor of the government of the Spanish Republic, Mayor of Barcelona, ​​Minister of Culture and Minister in Head of the Generalitat. In exile, he also presided over the National Council of Catalonia (1941-1945) and was a member of the government of the Generalitat in exile (1945-1947). Carles Pi i Sunyer also showed great talents as a writer in the course of his life.

The follow-up of the three brothers Pi and Sunyer in their exile allows us to show the fracture that the Civil War caused for our country. In this sense, on the one hand, the exhibition will show the long and complex itinerary of some men, with their respective families (with a very relevant role of their wives: Carmen Bayo, Mercedes Cuberta and Carmen Cuberta) , who leave their country in the hope of a imminent return that will never end due to the consolidation of the Franco regime. Brothers Pi and Sunyer, due to their Catalanist and republican past, will be the object of professional purification in the Spain of the Nuevo Estado and will suffer the consequences of the Law of Political Responsibilities. They had no place in national Catholic and unionist Spain. Thus, his exile becomes a rift that will never end, despite the fact that the two physiologists (Santiago and August) will redo their university careers in Latin America.

In short, this exhibition, which will feature original documents and objects mostly from family funds, has the challenge of evoking an experience of exile with all its consequences: uprooting, travel and travel around the world (mainly between Europe and America ), family separations, constant concern for a possible return and, especially, the longing, symbolized in Roses, the lost paradise of the Pi and Sunyer, where before the war they spent their summers.

Organized by: MUME, Historical Archive and Documentary Fund of the Carles Pi i Sunyer Foundation and the Catalan Institute for Cultural Heritage Research.

Curators: Laia Arañó, Margaret Townsend Pi-Sunyer and Carme Pi-Sunyer Peyrí.