The MemoriaLab program, which emerged in 2013 inspired by initiatives such as Glencree 1, Bakeaz Blai 2 and BatzART! 3 a year and a half after the definitive cessation of armed activity by ETA is a project in which civil society participate in the social construction of memory in the Basque Country Within this context and after decades of terrorism and violence in the Basque Country a previously unknown scenario has developed This new social and political reality establishes a favourable atmosphere for fostering the celebration of encounters between members of civil society where participants can share their testimonies regarding the impact politically motivated violence and disruptions to social harmony (lack of empathy fear and silence) has had on Basque society during decades the last forty years of which took place during a period of democracy The origins of MemoriaLab were inspired by three organizations with a proven track-record in the culture of peace and human rights: Gernika Peace Museum Foundation; Bakeola Funding was providing by organizing bodies the Town Councils of Gernika-Lumo and Abanto-Zierbana and the director of Victims and Human Rights of the General Secretary for Peace and Coexistence of the Basque Regional Government The project got underway with an encounter in which 28 participants from different backgrounds ages and population environments came together The organisers chose a venue in a rural setting for the event in an effort to encourage personal and collective reflection suited for hosting transformational dialogue on the effects of violence and the traumatic ordeal endured by Basque society managing historic loyalties and resentments the frenzy in the face of what comes out of the social healing processes the depth of human dignity and the complexity of human rights as an ethical framework for a renewed coexistence The program was conceived to be approached from the perspective of a social laboratory held in a safe environment in the form of a retreat and to utilize memory of the conflict and violence as transformational and generative material The purpose for this being two-fold: to promote the social construction of memory and to foster social relations based on nonviolent coexistence and respect for the pluralism of civil society sustained through democratic dialogue Participants in the group share their life experience to consolidate feeling and thought the program seeks to combine appreciative proposals that foster cognitive dialogue with bodily rooted learning the announcement for each encounter aims to bring together a microcosm of Basque society to reflect the plural nature of the initiative There are two different formats used; a one-day retreat in an urban setting or a two-day retreat at a rural location both of which combine two methodological premises: the paradigm of Process Work for conflict transformation and the Theory U process for managing change The investigation deals with three periods and responds to three questions: Analysing our past from the perspective of conflictive events Synthesis of the group’s developing knowledge and Integrating experience and looking to future initiatives The following initial approaches are a significant representation of methodological input which favour social processes of memory: – Culture of dialogue to temporarily experience other fragmented truths in the complex reality Integrated languages which combine linguistic Silence and emptiness as space for creative activity – Symbolic universe that encourages critical questioning of belief systems The meaning and cycle of memory which moves from lineal and measureless time to circular – Memory and art as peace education to question the paradigm that the “ends justify the means” Creating affects and achieving effects “looking after the means in the environment where we live” The project is set to continue and hold further encounters with academic collaboration and with the elaboration of educational materials The initiative will also be contrasted with other community intervention initiatives developed in Northern Ireland and a presentation will be given at the “Connection Law & Memory” Congress in Belgium and at the “Exchanging Experiences in Peace Building Resistance and Reconciliation” organised by the International Catalan Institute for Peace and the Museo Casa de la Memoria in Medellín Next year will see the creation of a website to chart the social mapping as well as the accumulated knowledge and experience of the project which it will be published as a collection of best practices by the Red Gernika editorial series the objective is to culminate with the organization of an exhibition in the Gernika Peace Museum showcasing pieces and work created by participants in the MemoriaLab encounters and community dialogues 1. Glencree is an initiative by a group of people who had suffered human rights violations perpetrated by different political persuasions who begin meeting in the town of the same name in 2007 2. Bakeaz Blai is an educational intervention program which uses two significant components for its application: the active and direct participation of educator-victims and the context of where it is carried out One part of the program is carried out in the classroom and the other in a supporting educational environment 3. BatzART! is a creative activity assembly to support dialogue and participative democracy, initiated in 2006. Polifonía de voces A thinking-action approach to navigate in the complexity of social change processes Alex (2009): Dia Tekhne: Dialogue Through Art Brussels; “First International Encounter of Participation Experiences among others during 2015; and “Experiences in the Application of Theory U and Public Administration” John Paul (2014): When Blood and Bones Cry Out: Journeys Through the Soundscape of Healing and Reconciliation The dates displayed for an article provide information on when various publication milestones were reached at the journal that has published the article activities on preceding journals at which the article was previously under consideration are not shown (for instance submission Journal of Water Process EngineeringCitation Excerpt :Landfill leachate composition was affected by many factors High organic content of kitchen waste will lead to high chemical oxygen demand (COD) and biological oxygen demand (BOD) for Landfill leachate [7,8] industrial waste often carries a large number of heavy metals and even persistent organic pollutants (POPs) [9,10] All content on this site: Copyright © 2025 Elsevier B.V. Eighty years since bombs devastated it – and as a new exhibition opens in Madrid displaying Picasso’s fabled artwork – the Basque town is a proud advocate of peace as well as gateway to a region of lush hills and wild Atlantic coast Past the handgun factory that has become an arts centre behind the rebuilt station with its shiny statue of the first Basque president there’s a long blackened tunnel with a padlocked door Eighty years ago this month it would have smelt of fear as crowds of townsfolk sheltered from one of the most infamous air raids in history a copy of which still hangs outside the UN security council “We don’t know how many people hid in this shelter,” says Begoña, my guide. “But all of them survived.” She smiles and walks me back into the rebuilt town that has turned itself into a global symbol of peace. Today, it has a peace museum (museodelapaz.org) and a peace park and survivors of the raid have linked with others from Dresden and Hiroshima to campaign against war in Iraq and Syria There are burly men in Basque berets walking its modern streets and its bars are doing a brisk trade in pintxos Large Figure In A Shelter, sculpture by Henry Moore. Photograph: The Henry Moore Foundation. All Rights Reserved, DACS/henry-moore.org 2017On a hillside above is the historic symbol of Basque identity: the oak tree of Guernica (Gernikako Arbola) beneath which generations of Basque leaders and Spanish kings have sworn to respect this fiercely independent region Beside it is the neo-classical Assembly Hall where regional leaders still meet to agree their annual budget where children play football beside a Henry Moore sculpture called Large Figure In A Shelter But there’s more to this area than Guernica I’m in the heart of Vizcaya (Biscay in English) a lush region of soft hills and solid farmhouses At its centre is a pretty Victorian waterfront with a fishermen’s chapel at one end and a Romanesque church at the other One wall of the church is used for playing pelota Across the water is a fabulous beach where surfers come to catch a left-hand barrel wave The harbour at Mundaka Photograph: Getty ImagesA mile or two west is Bermeo Two historic ships are being repaired in dry dock and a 17th-century whaler is moored near three tempting fish cafes Once sailors from here hunted cod and whale as far as Newfoundland and Christopher Columbus took pilots from Bermeo on his voyages past a tiny marina of blue and white yachts up a hill of cobbled lanes where a ruined palace gapes across a baroque square towards the cliff-side village of Elantxobe where space is so tight that the bus has to turn around on a tiny electric revolve steep alleys spill down between whitewashed houses where cats prowl and washing flutters At the bottom is a tiny harbour where cafe Itxas Etxea – bare brick walls and wraparound glass windows – is serving txakoli a 17th-century merchant’s house in the medieval fishing quarter I tiptoe up the winding wooden staircase to my room where the ceiling has carved beams and the windows look out on a Gothic church and a perfect sweep of beach At dusk I visit the bars on the quayside for pintxos then dine at a simple restaurant called Goitiko The owner offers football gossip on Basque favourites Athletic Bilbao Next morning I have a special appointment back in Guernica I am meeting one of the last survivors of 1937 Luis Iriondo Aurtenetxea is 94 and stands straight as a rake whose stone arcades survived the bombing but whose gates are marked by bullet holes Luis Iriondo Aurtenetxea a survivor of the Guernica bombing“On the day of the bombing The town was full of people for market day – which the Germans knew.” He shows me another tunnel “The church bells rang a warning and people pushed me deep inside this shelter I could feel the hot air of the explosions; I could hear the blasts His family survived and fled to France as refugees And he’s proud that his son has helped today’s refugees in Greece We want every town hall to have a peace committee to talk to their governments “When the German ambassador came here to apologise in 1997 I said to him: ‘A flag of peace should be raised from the ruins of what our town once was Former Spanish king London 2017Pablo Picasso’s painting of the bombing of Guernica is one of the 20th century’s most famous images A vast canvas in sombre tones of grey and blue it shows in searing detail the suffering of people and animals as bombs fell on their town He painted it for the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 International Exhibition in Paris and toured it around the world to publicise the massacre Picasso swore that neither he nor this painting would ever visit Spain until democracy was restored The picture was finally returned to Spain in 1981 It can be seen at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid This year the museum is holding an anniversary exhibition on how the picture was created: Pity and Terror Picasso’s Path to Guernica runs from 5 April to 4 September The trip was provided by the Spanish and Bilbao tourist boards, spain.info and bilbaoturismo.net, flights by Vueling contact Guernica tourist office at turismo@gernika-lumo.net Meanjin If you think walking alone on steep tracks through Spanish forest overgrown with eucalypt blackberry and bracken in oppressively humid weather carrying a 12-kilogram backpack for 25 kilometres every day for about six weeks is your idea of a good break from urban life then the Camino del Norte from Irun along the northern coast of Spain to Santiago de Compostela in Galacia is for you walking on narrow country roads and through industrial wastelands then by all means take the plunge Having completed the Camino Francés from St Jean Pied du Port in France to Santiago in 2016 I resolved before I walked the Camino Norte which like the Francés is sometimes called the Way in the ruins of a Celtic village near Castromayor I had wondered whether my ancestors may have lived there I had walked about 650 kilometres by then and distances like that can play tricks with one’s mind became the truth and simplicity with which my mother viewed the struggles during the course of her life I had also set out from St Jean with a walking stick that was a gift from a judge I left it in the cathedral in Santiago for him In the time of alternative facts and fake news I decided on the second Way I would explore the Norte through the context of Picasso’s monumental painting Guernica Perhaps that work would hold some answers to my deep sense of unease at the direction we were taking And the Norte passes through Gernika (the Basque spelling of the town and now named Gernika–Lumo) The first thing to do would be to see the painting This Way would begin at the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid The fire bombing of Gernika by the German and Italian air forces took place on 26 April 1937 It was intended to repress the Basque resistance to Franco as the Spanish Civil War unfolded and was seen as an opportunity by the Nazis and their imitators in Italy to test their weapons on a civilian population It was the forerunner to the notion of total war Many hundreds of civilians were killed and injured and most of the town was destroyed who were in nearby Bilbao covering the civil war Franco claimed the Basque people had destroyed their capital and murdered their own people These events occurred 80 years ago and to reflect on them the Reina Sofia mounted an exhibition The exhibition would run until 4 September 2017 And so good fortune and timing allowed me to examine the painting in a detailed way and by reference to the archival material on display Picasso began work on Guernica in Paris on 1 May 1937 He had been commissioned to complete a work for the Spanish pavilion at the forthcoming International Exposition of Art and Technology in modern life He had struggled to produce a work fit for the time until the attack on Gernika took place He completed the painting in about six weeks and it has since become an international symbol of peace and humanity That reputation was reinforced in 2003 when a replica tapestry of the painting that hangs in the UN in New York was covered in a shroud when Colin Powell sought approval for the invasion of Iraq so it didn’t appear on television behind him The Way began in the Reina Sofia among a group of Spanish students on a Friday afternoon in front of Guernica Picasso’s Camino to Guernica took him through Cubism and mythology his estrangement from Spain and a complex personal life The painting was also motivated by a global political event Politics had not been a factor in any of his earlier work What I didn’t know was that in the coming weeks 22 people would be murdered in Manchester eight in London and one in Melbourne in acts of terrorism and hundreds would die in a catastrophic fire again in London That day at the Reina Sofia I thought the painting seemed overcome by the burden of the expectation that it provide answers to the global challenges faced by humanity; answers Picasso didn’t intend to provide this cast some doubt on the theme of my Camino The other main Camino in Spain is the Primitivo a journey that began in Oviedo in the ninth century I decided I would walk the Norte from San Sebastian to Oviedo and that I would return in a year or so to complete the Primitivo to Santiago Gernika lay ahead across the steep and remote Basque countryside My departure coincided with unseasonal hot weather The stages from San Sebastian to Deba were along the coast Walking alone along the edge of the European continent on a clear day in early summer is surely a healthy way to leave urban life behind we stayed in comfortable albergues and ate paella I left Deba early one morning and entered the Basque hinterland Much of the Spanish forest had been cleared and replaced with pine and eucalypt Harsh logging truck tracks had been cut through it the waymarking is reliable and I didn’t get lost I felt it was okay to express it in overly strong terms ‘What the hell am I doing?’ I yelled into the forest a fit-looking Spanish man came up behind me He was carrying a daypack and was out for a stroll ‘Do not desecrate.’ He was right of course I told myself pilgrims like me often hit the wall early in a journey and I had hit mine That night I slept in a very basic room in Markina drank some Rioja and prepared for the walk the following day into Gernika Again it was an early start in low-lying cloud As the sun began to rise into the sky I walked into the fourteenth-century Monasterio de Zennaruza An ancient discarded church bell sat in a garden surrounded by roses A carved wooden serpent looked down at me as I drank some water From the monastery the Way again climbed steeply into dense forest a German pilgrim who had walked from his house near the Swiss border was going to Santiago and then back on the Camino Francés to France and ultimately Rome He said he was walking 5000 kilometres in about eight months He told me he had broken in five pairs of shoes at home and his family would send them ahead as needed As I approached Gernika loud gunshots rang out through the forest I had little choice but to keep going and assumed whoever was firing the high-powered rifle was aware the forest was occupied by a number of widely dispersed pilgrims taking off my backpack and ordering a large cold cerveza at the first bar I came to was one the great reliefs of my life Gernika today is a much more attractive town than we are led to believe The Park of European Peoples is adjacent to the Assembly House Nearby the fifteenth-century Church of Santa Maria also survived the firebombing and this area is a calm and dignified place In the Assembly House I met the administrative director who explained the history and work in the building to me The assembly and church survived the repression of fascism and provided the foundation for the people of the town to recover That night I ate in the busy and peaceful town square children played in the street well into the night where delectable tapas and drinks were being served A band played 1970s rock and roll in a nearby street There is a replica of Guernica in Gernika and a simple museum devoted to the attack A room in the museum re-creates a living room in an apartment in the town I sat in the darkness listening to the planes flying down the Mundarca River I left the town on the way to Bilbao along Calle Pablo Picasso Gernika is an important place and its dignified contribution to peace is well recognised in Europe Guernica the painting helps to keep the contribution alive why do we need to be reminded of these lessons or perhaps more fundamentally what are the lessons It began to emerge that this Camino was not so much about my pilgrimage but more concerned with a collective Camino They often dropped off and collected their children from the venue where the murders occurred They were in Bilbao for an installation and sculpture show their nephew was staging and we went to the Guggenheim together to see an abstract expressionist retrospective showing significant works by Rothko But after Gernika I needed to keep walking I walked into Cantabria and the weather from the Atlantic closed in The days were shrouded in low cloud and mist Ancient cliffs like those in south-west Victoria met the deep ocean Gerda was from Holland but she spoke English with an Irish brogue We stayed together in a well-known albergue in Germes run by Ernesto who seemed to be running a healthy business judging by the numbers of visitors he displayed on the charts at the entrance He told us to look at nature as we walked and not just the yellow way markers Patrick and I persuaded him to let us watch the Champions League final in his library with a bottle of Rioja The weather improved as I arrived in the medieval village of Santillana del Mar for my birthday I went to the Museum of Torture that exhibited an extraordinary array of devices to inflict immeasurable pain on dissidents during the Inquisition ‘Good people will do good things and bad people will do bad things but if you want good people to do bad things religion will help.’ I pondered this over the best Cantabrian fabada I have eaten The weather deteriorated again as I walked alone along the coast to Comillas and Llanes These towns on the Cantabrian Sea are truly beautiful rested my ageing body and enjoyed the food and architecture I would glimpse a reproduction of Guernica in a café but by then that purpose had become less clear I had walked about 300 kilometres from Gernika through peaceful untroubled countryside and towns In Asturias the forests were behind me and cow bells rang across the paths and trails lined with wild-flowers simple lives responding to the struggle we all face In Ribadesella I met Peter and Jane from England a litre of water and a coffee for 13 euros I’d become accustomed to having my main meal at lunchtime as most do in this part of Spain Lunch is at three and by that time of the day I’d walked 20 or so kilometres Peter and Jane devote their retirement to funding small business development in HIV-devastated villages in Kenya as their way of helping out They organise friends to contribute small monthly sums to support a shop They take no commission or profits of any kind and pay all the expenses themselves They visit Kenya each year to see how things are progressing It seemed to me that this was a model we could all consider if we wanted to help out I walked to La Isla and on to Oviedo along the coast and through the countryside My arrival in Oviedo was unlike arriving in Santiago I had not completed a Camino but walked a significant section of the Norte I left my walking stick in the cathedral cloisters and returned to Madrid to see Guernica again As I sat on the train crossing the Picos de Europa I felt the distance I had travelled once more the welcoming Spanish men and women I had met and the privilege of crossing their country on foot I arrived at the Reina Sofia late one evening and stood in the quiet gallery with the painting I kept thinking of the replica covered with a shroud in 2003 a former ALP cabinet minister and then Member of the Australian House of Representatives was present as a member of an Australian delegation and observed in relation to the invasion of Iraq ‘We may well live in the age of the smart bomb but the horror on the ground will be just the same as that visited on the people of Gernika and it won’t be possible to pull a curtain over that.’  In the time of alternative facts and fake news his words resonate today Since 1940, Australia’s literary culture has set out its fiercest ambitions in Meanjin. 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