The Ministry of Culture launched this Wednesday in the Madrid town of Alcalá de Henares the Historical Archive of Social Movementsan infrastructure that aims to “promote research and dissemination of social movements and civil activism in the last century in Spain.”

The launch of the Historical Archive of Social Movements was witnessed through the meeting that the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, held at the headquarters of the aforementioned archive with the first associations and individuals that have donated their funds: the Association of Friends of the International Brigades, The 25 Club, Afro Conference, the PCE, the 1º de Mayo Foundation, the Pasaje Begoña Association, the Pedro Zerolo Foundation, the Valentín de Foronda Institute of Social History and the jurist and researcher Juan José del Águila, according to the ministry.

The creation of the Historical Archive of Social Movements is linked to the motto ‘Culture with Memory’, an assertion with which Culture will carry out its actions related to democratic memory, and which served Urtasun to ratify that his department “will always defend memory against those who promote oblivion and contempt for the victims of the dictatorship.”

In his opinion, “what we do today, with the public opening of this archive, is to fulfill our obligation as administrations: to ensure truth, justice and reparation for the victims.” After thanking the entities involved for his contribution to the archive, he defended “go beyond the simple custody of documents” linking it with “a collective and participatory process” about “the construction and social use of archives and our documentary heritage.”

Starting in September, researchers will be able to request consultation of these archives generated – in many cases, clandestinely or in exile – by political and social organizations opposed to Franco’s regime and by environmental groups, feminist associations and prominent personalities. However, citizens and researchers themselves already You can see a selection of documents deposited in the archive on the websitewhich has just been launched.

International Brigades

For its part, Urtasun signed the document of deposit of funds under the agreement by which the Historical Archive of Social Movements hosts and promotes the study and knowledge of the funds of the Association of Friends of the International Brigades.

Urtasun stressed that the International Brigades “symbolize that reason, that hope in the democracy of a Europe doomed then, as so often, to wars and totalitarianism” and noted that “that lesson of generosity of the International Brigades has never been extinguished, as well as the debt of gratitude to the thousands of volunteers who joined in defense of the Spanish Republic and whose memory now returns to this archive.”

This agreement allows the Historical Archive of Social Movements to host, among its inaugural collections, a volume of nearly ten linear meters of documentation, videos, photographs, books and objects of historical relevance about thousands of foreign volunteers, from fifty countries, who participated in the Civil War enrolled in the ranks of the Popular Army of the Second Republic.

This fund is nourished by the donations from the brigade members and their families to the associationamong which the graphic and audiovisual files related to General Walter, Bulgarian brigade members, or interviews that have been carried out since 2007 as part of an Oral Memory recovery project stand out.

Feminism and workers’ struggle

Two of the most voluminous files in the Historical Archive of Social Movements belong to the Provincial Federation of Women’s Associations Flora Tristán and the Feminist Research and Training Center, with more than 400 boxes with objects, cassettes and other audiovisual and bibliographic materials. The aforementioned groups document the grouping of housewives in the Madrid districts since 1969, when the term ‘housewife’ was a requirement to obtain legal recognition.

The personal file of Juan José del Águila Torres, labor lawyer, Social Judge and founder of the first labor law firm linked to CCOO, also stands out. Composed of some 350 boxes of documentationits content allows us to better understand the methods of repression, the Transition and the restoration of labor rights.

The Historical Archive of Social Movements will house the documentary archive of the Espacio Afro cultural center, which aims vindicate and value Afro-descendant people in Spainand will promote the study of the Unitary Union, founded in 1977 with the support of the Revolutionary Workers’ Organization (ORT).

Finally, it will house the personal archive of the socialist senator Fermín Solana (1928-2022), collected in more than 200 boxes of information about places in Spain, press clippings, notes and personal objects and the photographic archive of Enrique Canocomposed of more than a hundred images donated by the author himself, in digital and physical format, which document the Madrid scene and the daily reality of a time in which a generation of reporters who renewed photojournalism and documentary photography coincided. .