The exhibition ‘El exilio de los niños de la guerra’ (‘The exile of the children of war’), inaugurated today in Bilbao, has among its aims to “repair the anonymity to which democratic society has forced nearly 33.000 children evacuated during the civil war” as well as “contributing to closing the wounds”.

These were the words of the president of the Fundación Pablo Iglesias, Alfonso Guerra, during the official opening act of the exhibition, which the lehendakari (regional president) Juan José Ibarretxe also attended. Other illustrious visitors included the mayor of Bilbao, Iñaki Azkuna; the president of the Fundación Largo Caballero, Antón Saracíbar; the general secretary of trades union UGT, Cándido Méndez; many Basque socialist politicians; and many ‘children of war’.

Ibarretxe stated during his speech that “the people and the towns without memory, are not people or towns, they are ghosts”, and he encouraged “breaking the dictum ‘to achieve peace you must do war’”.

Alfonso Guerra, prominent leftwing politician of old, said “memory is an instrument of social construction” that can also be used to “learn from our mistakes and therefore not to repeat them”, and he highlighted the fact that this show “looks to the past but it also takes responsibility for the present and for those other children who are with broken families today”. 

This itinerant exhibition will stay in Bilbao until January 23rd, the entrance is free and it includes photographs, texts, drawings and objects that belonged to the children who experienced the evictions, the exile, the repatriations and the return to Spain.