Educational workshops on exile and European democratic memory in Badajoz high schools
On 8 and 9 May, a series of educational workshops focusing on exile and European democratic memory were held in two different secondary schools in the province of Badajoz. These activities were part of an initiative funded by the Provincial Council of Badajoz, with the participation as teachers of Nadia Gayoso de la Calle and Carmen Coleto, project managers of FIBGAR, and Sara de la Riva, beneficiary of our project ‘Memorízate – Comprometámonos con la memoria’.
The main objective of these workshops was to bring to secondary and high school classrooms, specifically 4th ESO and 1st Baccalaureate, a critical reflection on the consequences of exile, as well as the importance of democratic memory for the peaceful future of our country and Europe.
On Thursday 8 May, on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance and Tribute to the Men and Women Victims of Exile, a three-hour workshop ‘Exile and memory: lessons from the past for the present’ was held at the Meléndez Valdés Secondary School in Villafranca de los Barros. Twenty-one students between the ages of 15 and 18 participated. The workshop also included the participation of 2 members of the Association for the Democratic Historical Memory of Tierra de Barros (AMHD – Tierra de Barros) who shared their personal stories about exile with the participants. The event analysed the historical processes linked to Spanish exile during the Civil War and Franco’s regime, how it impacts on Spanish society and the different current realities of forced displacement, such as Palestine, Myanmar or Western Sahara. The workshop was accompanied by didactic activities that helped to maintain attention and encouraged critical thinking and dialogue in the classroom, such as the creation of a memory mural where students had to reflect their reflections on the subject.
The following day, Friday 9 May, a second workshop was held under the title ‘Democratic memory: from local to European’ at the IES Extremadura in the town of Mérida. On this occasion, 47 students from 4th ESO and 1st Baccalaureate took part in a two-hour session. The focus of the workshop started with the knowledge of what happened in Spain during the Civil War and Franco’s regime, and ended with the shared memories of the different European countries, such as Germany with Nazism, Italy with Fascism, or Portugal with Salazarism. This workshop was also accompanied by activities that allowed students to identify links between Spanish democratic memory and other processes of recovery of historical memory in Europe.
Both workshops were very well received by the students, arousing interest in them and in the teaching staff of the schools. The workshops offered a space for intergenerational dialogue, where the young people were able to approach in an experiential way to fundamental episodes to know our democratic memory.
This type of initiative focused on human rights demonstrates how democratic memory should be used as an educational tool. Only through the experiences of the past can we build a future that is fairer and free of human rights violations.
