Half a hundred students share “spaces of memory and conscience” in the Government Delegation

• Participating in the II Inter-Center Meeting of the Educational Group “Sharing spaces of memory and conscience”
• La Cabrera has been the host town, and the program has included visits to Bustarviejo, Buitrago de Lozoya or the Reina Sofía Museum
• The students visited the headquarters of the Delegation in the framework of the celebration of ‘Spain in Freedom, 50 years’

The Delegation of the Government of Spain in the Community of Madrid has been one of the spaces for exchange of impressions and experiences of teachers, students and students who have participated in the Second Inter-Center Meeting of the Educational Group “Sharing spaces of memory and conscience”, which was held from September 28 to 30 in the region.

On Monday, September 29, the teaching staff and students of the Institute of Secondary Education (IES) Montes Orientales (de Iznalloz, Granada), and the IES La Cabrera (de La Cabrera, Madrid), location that hosts this second meeting, were received by the delegate, Francisco Martín, at the headquarters of the Government Delegation within the framework of the program ‘Spain in Freedom, 50 years’.

It was after a historical tour of the center of Madrid, which included a visit to the Monument to the victims of Mauthausen. In the morning they had completed a yincana of democratic memory in the neighborhood of Lavapiés and visited the rooms of the Guernica and the Civil War posters of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. The previous day they had come to see the barracks of the Bustarviejo Prison.

On the other hand, on Tuesday morning, the deputy delegate of the Government, Pilar Trinidad, attended the exhibitions of research on democratic memory by students of both centers and the presentation of the project "Stolpesteiner Sierra Norte" led by the La Cabrera institute.

Later, Pilar Trinidad accompanied them to visit the exhibition “A gap in silence. Exhumations in the parish cemetery of Colmenar Viejo” that the San Sebastián de los Reyes Truth Commission Association has brought to the center itself.

The programming of this second meeting was completed in the afternoon with a visit to the Picasso Museum in Buitrago del Lozoya and a tour of the municipality that houses it.

Project “Sharing spaces of memory and conscience”

The initiative “Sharing spaces of memory and conscience” seeks to create a network of centers that work on historical and democratic memory in classrooms. The starting point is to work on the issue of human rights as something fundamental and inalienable that should unite all public educational communities of different geographies, rather than addressing it in an isolated and disjointed way.

From this perspective, the creation of a group of educational centers became an excellent opportunity to work, share and learn from experiences of other centers and socioeconomic, cultural and educational contexts, promoting exchange and interaction.

Currently, the centers that make up the proposed group are the IES Montes Orientales de Iznalloz (Granada, Andalusia), as a coordinating center, and the IES La Cabrera (La Cabrera, Community of Madrid), as a coordinated center, which hold periodic meetings. The first was in the spring of 2025, in the Iznalloz (Granada), and included a visit to the Place of Memory of the Ravine of Víznar, among others.