El Mirador de la Memoria

El Mirador de la Memoria, at El Torno near Cáceres in Extremadura, was inaugurated in 2009 in memory of the victims of the Spanish Civil War. Designed by sculptor Francisco Cedenilla Carrasco, it consists of four life-size but unclothed statues representing three men and one woman. These haunting figures are set dramatically against the beautiful landscape of the Valle del Jerte, where guerrilla fighters continued the anti-Francoist resistance. The memorial was erected at the initiative of a local youth organization that also held events on memory under the auspices of the 2007 Law of Historical Memory. Alberto Rubio, president of the youth organization responsible for the monument’s erection, noted that it was intended to commemorate all victims of the war, including those imprisoned, tortured, exiled and displaced. Shortly after its installation, the monument was shot at and vandalized. Cedenilla Carrasco, its sculptor, declared that the attack had intensified the meaning of his work and that the bullet holes should be left untouched. The monument was featured in Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar’s film, The Silence of Others, which won a Goya for best documentary in 2019.