Memorial Democràtic’s Audiovisual Testimony Bank

This interview with Josep Tarragó Clua is part of the Audiovisual Testimony Bank (BAT), the oral history archive created by Memorial Democràtic (MD), of the Generalitat of Catalonia.  

Thanks to the collaboration between the Virtual Museum of the Spanish Civil War and Memorial Democràtic, the BAT can be consulted at https://banc.memoria.gencat.cat/en/results/interview. Started in 2008, Memorial Democràtic’s oral history archive houses 488 interviews that total 640 hours in length. Most are in Catalan, but simultaneous translation to Spanish, French, and English is available. Covering the period from 1931 to 1980: the Second Republic, the Civil War, the Francoist regime, and the Transition, the interviews deal with such topics as people who were victins for ideological, religious or social reasons as well as individuals and groups who suffered Francoist repression, exili and deportation, the anti-Francoist struggle, and the Transition to democracy. They are searchable by the name of the interviewees, by their bithplace or place of residence, by topic, and by time period, especially the Civil War.

The BAT is part of Memorial Democràtic’s Democratic Memory Bank, which is freely available to the public at link https://banc.memoria.gencat.cat/en. Its more than 20,000 records preserve the democratic memory of Catalonia from the proclamation of the Second Republic to the restoration of autonomous government in Catalonia in 1980. It consists of the Census of Francoist Symbolism, the censos of Catalan and Spanish Deportees to the Nazi Concentration Camps, the data base of former political presoners, the records of Spanish Refugee Aid, and the Network of Spaces of Democratic Memory of Catalonia. Bringing together a number of sites that constitute the tangible and intangible commemorative patrimony of the struggles for democràtic rights and freedoms between 1931 and 1980, the Memory Bank expresses the shared will to recover, preserve, and promote this patrimony. Its diverse components include interpretation centres, in situ patrimony such as trenches, bunkers, battlefields, and mass graves, memory routes like the route of exile and the route of freedom, places and spaces of resistance, archives and documentation centres, and commemorative monuments.