RECORDAR

LOCATION: Barcelona, Spain

Measuring more than 23.500 square feet (2,200 square meters), it was created with the help of local residents and more than 500 volunteers, had the philanthropic support of the small business association Born Comerç and the production support of Subagora Agency and Guzzo Club. Within the eyes are the reflections of the refugees from the Spanish Civil War. 

The name of the artwork refers, in an etymological sense, to the Latin term recordāri, composed by re (again) and cordis (heart). In this sense, it emphasizes that the act of remembering implies that a person, a situation or an object passes again through the heart of the person who recalls the memory. Through that memory, a person awakens, re-lives and feels the things that were lived and felt in the past, now actualized in the immediate reality of the moment.

The artwork ‘Recordar’ aims to give homage to the 465,000 men, women, and children who between the years of 1936 to 1939 lived through the Spanish Republican exile and crossed the frontier to France in order to save their lives. Recordar calls us to reflect upon the importance of our historic memory and the social problems that keep repeating themselves. The piece invites spectators to pass through their hearts those experiences that, as part of history, conform to our cultural legacy, so we can avoid repeating in the present the horrors and indifference of the past.