Carried out by the 'Memory Maps' project of the UNED, in collaboration with the State Secretariat of Democratic Memory, the exhibition, which can be visited until February 14, 2026 at Casa América, gathers objects, images, letters and testimonies that remained hidden for decades in Spanish cabinets or in exile houses.
The route is articulated in six spaces with different exhibition proposals. The first room plays with the idea of camouflage: documents that entered or left Spain disguised as something else reveal, on its reverse side, the keys that allowed its circulation. Next, a corridor formed by more than 1500 suspended letters recreates the correspondence between a mother and her exiled child, which over the years evolves into cassette recordings sent to keep the conversation alive.
A souvenir shop invites you to look at the “B-side” of the tourist images of Spain in the sixties and seventies, contrasting its idealized story with audiovisuals about exile, the encounter with exiled communities and difficult returns. The next room, apparently empty, guards small closets containing hidden objects during the Franco era: stitched photographs, letters written on hidden sheets or medals, fragments that preserved memories that could not be shown.
A sound space gathers six women’s voices whose stories sustain much of the memory of exile, underlining its essential role in the transmission of memories. The exhibition culminates in a attic, a metaphor for the place where the exile preserves everything that accompanies it: what was brought from Spain and what was acquired in the land of refuge. A symbolic territory made of objects, smells and textures that reveals not only an identity, but a particular way of inhabiting the world.
The exhibition “The wandering body. Spanish exile 1939-1975" is the result of the investigation of Jorge Moreno Andrés and Julián López García, curators of the sample, within the project 'Memory Maps' of the UNED.
From December 17, 2025 to February 14, 2026.
Monday to Friday from 11.00 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. Saturdays from 11.00 h. to 15.00 h. Sundays and holidays, closed.
House of America. Access by C/ Marqués del Duero, 2. Madrid.
Free admission until complete capacity.
