Silence…

This is the first of a series of posts published in occasion of the study visit done on the event of the Grundtvig project “Democratic Memorial: the Ebre’s battle case”

I come from a silence that was long, thick and heavy…

I come from a silence of a society that was forced to forget and to keep silence to survive in a long repressive times.

I come from a silence of generations that were taught that silence was an important prerequisite for “keeping peace”

My grandparents never spoke about the years of the war,… my parents neither. They didn’t pronounce the words of personal and community pain and fear. 

To speak about the past was to pass the pain to the new generations, and us we were suposed to be spared…  only look forward.

 Probably a majority of my society is still there…

 … but an imposed silence on the past will not be imposed for ever.

 75 years after the civil war started, to recover the democratic memory of the country become for some people a must for the construction of the culture of peace and democracy.

 During years of silence and re-education, society was convinced that republic times and civil war, were the same, thus providing an alibi to justify a version of history that stated that the country was divided in two halves with two regular armies confronting each other in the same grounds and the same responsibilities.

 Breaking the silence and recovering the democratic memory of the country de-constructs this imposed myths.

…an interesting documentary about family silences (in Spanish) http://www.tv3.cat/videos/195377395

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