Between April and May 1954, one of the most ambitious expeditions of the Ethnological Museum of Barcelona, inaugurated in 1949, was organized in the protectorate of Morocco. The sculptor Eudald Serra, who was part of the expedition, wanted to model a nude bust, but local law and morality made it impossible to find any woman willing to pose. Serra did not give up; he simply looked where colonial power was absolute. With the collaboration of the Spanish authorities, he visited prisons, reformatories, and "public houses." The use of sex workers as models was systematic and deliberate in many campaigns, taking advantage of their extreme vulnerability in a context of colonial domination.

Memory is not impartial. There are many silences, invisible people, and biases. Who is remembered and who is not, and why this happens, is a fact that can generate great debates and help imagine new paths, as could be seen this Tuesday at the Pedralbes Monastery. In a new session of the Pedralbes Dialogues, organized in collaboration with ARA and under the intellectual direction of philosopher Daniel Gamper and the moderation of Antoni Bassas, the following question was addressed: Does memory have a gender?

In the heart of Valencia's historic center, opposite the Central Market and very close to the church of Santa Caterina, stands a Gothic building that puzzles visitors. One might think it's a temple, but in reality, it is the Merchants' Exchange. At the entrance, satirical and obscene figures abound, such as men and women touching their genitals and birds defecating on buttocks. At the exit door, however, everything is harmony. The writer Juan Francisco Ferrándiz (Cocentaina, 1971) is so fascinated by this Gothic building that it has inspired him to write a book about its construction in the late 15th century: La Llotja de la Seda

"Ruins tell what people keep silent about," affirms archaeologist Alfredo González Ruibal (Madrid, 1976), who has spent two decades excavating the remnants of the Civil War and Francoism. He has explored mass graves, trenches, concentration camps, and shacks, and has eaten a pizza in the kitchen of the Pazo de Meirás, the summer residence of the Franco family until very recently. Pazo de Meirás, the summer residence of the Franco family until very recently. He has followed the trails of hunger and abundance. In País en ruinas (Crítica), he demonstrates that Spain is a great archaeological site of the repression of the war and the dictatorship, and that, indeed, many "treasures" that rebel against silence are hidden there.

Ermomir and Riquil·la were buried with great care in the year 966. The intention was clear: that no one could violate their eternal rest. To achieve this, a structure was designed that today we would describe as an impregnable tomb. Almost three meters deep, in an anthropomorphic pit, the couple was deposited naked, only wrapped in shrouds.

The current CAP Passeig de Maragall, in the Sant Martí district of Barcelona, still appears today –half a century after Franco's death– in the name of the Spanish Falange (FET y de las JONS). Despite the Generalitat managing the center and assuming all maintenance costs, the registered ownership remains in the hands of the dictatorship's political apparatus. This is the most disconcerting finding of the research by historian Neus Moran, who documents how the State protected health heritage from Francoist plunder before the transfer of powers.

The more we know about Neanderthals thanks to archaeological research, the closer they get to us. We know they could speak, but we don't know if they invented stories. They cared for the sick and the dead, but we don't know if they hugged and cried at a burial. They painted objects and cave walls, but we cannot know if it was for a mystical purpose or to describe their daily lives. A new study led by the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) further demolishes the image of Neanderthals as rough and primitive hunters: 115,000 years ago, populations in the Los Aviones cave (Murcia) were already planning shellfish consumption according to the season, with a clear preference for winter months.

A few days ago, the German newspaper Die Zeit made available to its readers an online search engine that allows you to find out in a matter of seconds if there is any Nazi in your family. In Spain, we are a long way from being able to do anything similar. For years, different researchers, historians, and relatives of victims of Francoism have made requests and complaints because the Ministry of the Interior has become an insurmountable wall for accessing documentation. Some have even thrown in the towel and had to set aside their doctoral thesis.

At about 2,250 meters above sea level, in the Natural Park of the Headwaters of the Ter and Freser, halfway between the monastery of Núria and the summit of Puigmal, there is a cave that was occupied intensively, and not sporadically, between the fifth millennium BC and the end of the first millennium BC. Named Cova 338, it is the most important high-mountain prehistoric site documented in the Pyrenees mountain range. The latest discovery includes numerous combustion structures, faunal remains, ceramic fragments, and a notable collection of green minerals, probably malachite, which demonstrate that copper-rich minerals were systematically exploited there during the late Neolithic and the Bronze Age. This data places Cova 338 among the oldest known evidence of this type of activity in Western Europe.

During the 70s and 80s, José María Cruz Novillo, renewed the iconographic imagery of post-Franco Spain. He did not limit himself to creating logos; he built the visual imagery of a society emerging from the lethargy of the dictatorship and aspiring to be modern. Born in Cuenca in 1936, he died just a few weeks shy of his 90th birthday. In 2020, Filmin released a documentary that pays tribute to him and allowed many generations to discover him: The Man Who Designed Spain, by directors Andrea G. Bermejo and Miguel Larraya

Delving into the history of the Spartans is not easy. They left practically no written sources, and everything we know comes from what the ancient Greeks wrote and built over time. In the popular imagination, there is the terrible battle against the Persians, Thermopylae. In the pass of Thermopylae, King Leonidas and three hundred Spartans led seven thousand Greeks to hold back an immense Persian army until reinforcements arrived. Among the Persians were combatants from 46 nations, and the Spartans, according to Aristophanes, fought like furious beasts, with foam running down their jaws and legs.

We know many things about the Romans, because they left extensive documentation that mainly recounts their exploits, the intrigues of emperors, and the daily lives of ordinary mortals. A vast amount of archaeological evidence, both on land and at sea, has also uncovered everything they built and the technical advances they achieved. With bioarchaeology, it is even possible to know with precision what materials they used to make vessels as waterproof as possible and where they built and repaired them. And to delve into very specific details like those revealed by a new study published in Frontiers in Materials, with researchers from France and Croatia, which analyzes the coating of a Roman vessel (called Ilovik–Parzine 1), which sank approximately 2,200 years ago off the coast of what is now Croatia.

The Trinitat prison, inaugurated in 1963, was the scene of prison repression against women in Catalonia during the last fifteen years of Francoism. Apparently, it was a modern center, but the objective was none other than to re-educate the inmates according to the criteria of the nuns of the Evangelical Crusades. There they locked up women convicted of common crimes and also political activists. For years, different entities have been fighting to ensure that the place does not disappear from the map and serves to remember this chapter of history, but until now the Barcelona City Council had maintained that it was not compatible with the urban development project. Finally, it has had to give in and part of the prison will be preserved because the process to declare the site a Good of Cultural Interest of Catalonia (BCIN) as a historical site has begun. "The Barcelona City Council ignored all the proposals we made," assures Pep Cruanyes, spokesperson for the Comissió de la Dignitat. "Their argument is that the housing plan construction project was very advanced and it was impossible to preserve anything from the center," he adds.

Traditionally, there has been much debate in France about whether French fascism did not exist or if it had been a marginal phenomenon before the Nazi occupation. There is growing consensus that no country can boast of being immune to fascism, but the Italian historian Sergio Luzzatto (Rome, 1963) goes a step further and states in the book El primer fascista (Pasado y Presente) that the first fascist was a French aristocrat: Antoine-Amédée-Marie-Vincent Manca Amat de Vallombrosa (1858-1896). Better known as the Marquis de Morès, he soon became convinced that the capitalist elites were contaminated by what he considered the Morès failed in practically all the projects he undertook: as a rancher in the Dakota territory, where he tried to revolutionize the meat industry; in the construction of a railway line in Asia, and, finally, when he returned to France to make a career as a populist leader and antisemitic demagogue. In this latter context, he played a particularly dark role within the , a political scandal that deeply divided French society. Luzzatto maintains that Morès's activism contributed to creating the ideological climate that made the accusation against the Jewish French officer credible. Morès ended up being murdered in the Moroccan desert, but, despite his failures, Luzzatto believes he was a visionary.

What better space to talk about Francesc Cambó (1876-1947) than the place that was his home? Specifically, his library, which remains intact, with all the shelves and all the books. This was the setting for a conversation between Borja de Riquer, the historian who knows the most about the factotum of the Lliga and his complex trajectory, and the deputy director of ARA, Ignasi Aragay.

The dragon can be terrifying, as it is an enormous creature capable of dominating all the forces of nature: earth, water, fire, and air. In the Babylonian poem Enuma Elix which was ritually performed during the Babylonian New Year festival, it is explained how the god Marduk defeats the sea goddess Tiamat, represented as a sea serpent and a symbol of chaos. In Greek tradition, figures like Medusa or sea monsters also express this tension between order and chaos. The Judeo-Christian tradition contributed greatly to the dragon's bad reputation: it turned it into the symbol of the enemy par excellence. In contrast, in China, dragons have a benevolent character. There they embody the control of natural elements, are venerated in temples, and, in some dynasties, represented imperial power. In the Scandinavian world, dragons are not solely negative forces either, but are also associated with the sea, essential for the life and survival of the Vikings. They were seen as both a threat and a protection.

It was not exceptional for Roman-era mummies to be buried with papyri. This has been confirmed by the Oxirrhynchus Archaeological Mission, from the Institute of Ancient Near Eastern Studies (IPOA) of the University of Barcelona, in the exhumations they have carried out in the Egyptian town of El-Bahnasa, ancient Oxirrhynchus. "They placed the papyri in the chest and pelvic area, under the wrapping, folded and sealed with clay, and they contained magical texts written in Greek," explains Maite Mascort, who directs, with Esther Pons, the archaeological mission that began in 1992. For the first time, however, a fragment of a literary text has appeared, Homer's "Iliad". It is not that the deceased was a lover of texts that explain the pain and anger of some of the protagonists of the Trojan War, but rather that the papyrus was reused. "A manuscript of the Iliad" was used to write the magical texts that used to accompany the deceased," assures Mascort.

After the death of Franco in November 1975, Catalan culture experienced an urgent need to reclaim public space. And on Sant Jordi's Day in 1976, this became very clear. That year, the festival was experienced with great euphoria, even though the shadow of the dictatorship also made itself felt. “It seemed like a great day, that April 23rd. I come from the Civil Registry, where a friend will soon be able to change a Castilianized name for its native form; I see Catalan flags, Catalan books overflowing the stalls, the bust of Prat de la Riba returning to occupy a place at the corner of the Pati dels Tarongers of the Generalitat and, to top it all off, a new novelty, a Catalan newspaper, the first in 37 years, after an order erased our press from the map, along with the Statute and so many other things,” wrote the writer Manuel de Pedrolo, who also signed copies of his book Procés de contradicció suficient, published by Edicions 62.

Vjekoslav Luburić was a Croatian general who led Jasenovac, one of the bloodiest concentration camps of World War II, where thousands of people, mostly Serbs, Jews, and Roma, were brutally murdered. He was known as Maks the Butcher, and even the Nazis noted his cruelty. Lieutenant Artur Hefner, a Wehrmacht officer, visited Jasenovac in February 1942 and described it as a camp “of the worst kind, equal to Dante's inferno”. After the war, the Nazi criminal fled justice and settled in Spain, protected by the Franco regime and under a false identity. He settled in Carcaixent, in the Valencian Country, where he lived under the name Vicente Pérez García and ran a printing press. In 1969 he was murdered in his home under circumstances never fully clarified. Since then, he has been buried in a tomb with a shield of fascist Croatia.

The majority of battles related to the Francoist legacy are very long. In 2016, Parliament approved the removal of the Francoist monument from the Ebro. In November 2020, the Generalitat announced that the monument would be removed in the summer of 2021. There was a project by architect Antonio López to do so. As with most issues related to the dictatorship, however, the paths are full of obstacles and judicial disputes are prolonged. Nevertheless, perhaps soon the image of the 45-meter wrought iron perforated pyramid, built in 1966 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Francoist victory, could disappear from the river that flows through Tortosa. wrought iron  45 meters, built in 1966 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Francoist victory, could disappear from the river that flows through Tortosa.