The Virtual Spanish Civil War Museum

In the absence of a physical museum for the time being to the Spanish Civil War, specifically in Barcelona, this site is intended as the beginning of a virtual museum, comprising real artifacts from the war and its consequences. The objects and documents come from the collection owned by the Walking museum of the Spanish Civil War and from images of artifacts and documents loaned by individuals and organisations from around the world, many of which will tell a story. It is currently only in English but plans to be available in at least Spanish and Catalan in the future.

The wwbsute grew out of the now-shelved Amigce project presided over by Paul Preston to build a museum to the war in Barcelona, covered in The Guardian. The website was begun in June 2018 and is still at a very early stage. Imagine, if you will, walking around a museum in which a few exhibits are on display, yet electricians and painters are at work in the same rooms, stuff is piled up in boxes and indeed walls are being built at the same time

The Amigce declaration:

The Spanish Civil War was the prologue of the Second World War and an event key to understanding the history of the 20th century. Despite its international reach and although there are various interpretation centres concerning specific aspects of it, or specific sections within general history museums, there has yet to be created a major museum that can offer a comprehensive view of the facts.

The absence of such a specialized museum is largely due to the characteristics of the transition from the Franco regime to a parliamentary Monarchy. This process was based on a tacit agreement among political parties that resulted in a social and institutional silence on the war and its consequences. That agreed upon silence, which was superimposed by four decades of dictatorial distortion of history, constituted an agreement by this oversight in exchange for peace. After 30 years since the end of that period, we  face the paradox that interest in the facts that occurred years ago and the need for memory still remain, while there is a lack of knowledge about the Civil War, especially among the young.

Image: Liberty Bell. Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. New York 1939.