Exhibition: From Spain to Russia. Retrieving the story of the Children of War

Exhibition: From Spain to Russia. Retrieving the story of the Children of War

From September 9 to November 5, 2017

Opening, Saturday 9 September 2017 at 10.30 am.

Between 1936 and 1939, Spain suffered the effects of a bloody fratricidal war that killed thousands of children. Spanish children, like adults, suffered the consequences of the conflict and were direct victims of hostilities. They had to deal with food shortages, unhealthiness and many diseases. They watched as violence and revenge took over their streets, which went from being spaces for play and recreation to dangerous and forbidden spaces. Sirens and shelters became his day-to-day life due to the constant bombardment that ravaged the country. They stopped going to school. Many have no choice but to leave. Convinced that this was the only way they could survive, his parents decided that they should be part of one of the many evacuation campaigns organized by the Government of the Republic. The evacuation of children abroad was the first exile of the Spanish people resulting from the Civil War.

Among all the countries that welcomed Spanish minors, the Soviet Union was, without a doubt, the one that generated the most praise and criticism of the moment, the one that most ignited consciences and shook hearts. The 2,895 children who landed in the ports of Yalta and Leningrad between March 21, 1937 and the end of October 1938 aroused as much interest then as they do now, 80 years after their departure.

This exhibition, the result of the Project Between Spain and Russia. Recovering the history of the Children of War, subsidized by the Ministry of the Presidency of the Government of the Spanish State, aims to rebuild the lives of those children who had to abandon everything because of the war. But it is not a question of recovering its history from the official documents or journalistic chronicles of the time, but of rewriting it giving priority to its own words, to its oral and written testimonies (drawings, writings, letters, memories , newspapers, autobiographies, etc.)

Since its inauguration in Alcalá de Henares (Pablo Iglesias Foundation and Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Alcalá) on October 16, 2012, the exhibition has toured different cities in the peninsular geography as Salamanca (Faculty of Geography and History of the University of Salamanca); Murcia (Museum of the University of Murcia); Segovia (Room Ex.presa 2-La Cárcel / Segovia Creation Center of Segovia City Council); Madrid (Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the Autonomous University of Madrid); Santander (Auditorium of the University of Cantabria); Coria del Río-La Puebla del Río, Seville (Museum of the Autonomy of Andalusia); Oliva, Valencia (Oliva Ethnological Museum); and Las Palmas (Casa de Colón, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria). She is currently making a route through northern Catalonia where she is being welcomed by different symbolic places of the republican exile, such as Algiers (Association FFREEE, Fils et Filles de Républicains Espagnols et Enfants de l’Éxode); i Elna (Swiss Maternity Hospital of Elne); now completing this tour at the Exile Memorial Museum (MUME) in La Jonquera. Thanks to this itinerancy, and to the opportunities that the future will offer, it will be possible to fulfill the main purpose of the sample: to make known this historical phenomenon and, at the same time, to pay a sincere and deserved tribute to its protagonists.

This exhibition, curated by Verónica Sierra of the University of Alcalá de Henares, has been produced by the Pablo Iglesias Foundation and aims to recover the memory of children who were transferred to Russia during the 1936-1939 conflict.

The exhibition will be taken to the MUME in collaboration with the City of Elna and the association DAME (Descendants et Amis de la Maternité d’Elne).

More information about the expo on the Pablo Iglesias Foundation website.

As a complementary activity to the exhibition "Between Spain and Russia", the family and children's activity (from 6 to 12 years old) Tales of war and peace will take place on Saturday 9 September:

Family and children's activity (from 6 to 12 years old) by Tramoia Cultura.

MUME, Saturday, September 9, 2017 at 11 a.m.

Taking as a leitmotif the book by Pablo Neruda "The book of questions", we propose a selection of illustrated albums on war and peace, where we will go from historical moments to stories in particular, and delve into the human condition as the backbone of every possibility.

The aim of this activity is to present a series of albums with aesthetic and literary potential, in order to arouse children's interest and curiosity towards books, thus also awakening their approach to reading and literature.

The presentation of the different albums will not be done according to their narrative structure, but based on very specific elements, both the story they contain and their visual potential.

Some of the books used throughout the session are:

– La història de l’Erika. Ruth Vander Zee i Roberto Innocenti. Ed. Kalandraka.

– El pato y la muerte. Wolf Erlbruch. Barbara Fiore Editora.

– La gota de mel. Lise Mélinand. Bilboquet.

– L’enemic. Davide Cali i Serge Bloch. Takatuka.

– Libro de las preguntas. Pablo Neruda. Isidro Ferrer. Ed.MediaVaca.