Polarised Topography of Rival Memories: The Commemorations of the 11th March 2004 Train Bombings in Madrid

Gérôme Truc (1) , Cristina Sanchez-Carretero (2)

1 ISP - Institut des Sciences sociales du Politique
2 CSIC - Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas [España] = Spanish National Research Council [Spain]

By focusing on the spatial dimension of the memorialisation process of the 11 March 2004 train bombings in Madrid, this chapter explores the tension between different forms of memorials, and shows how it can lead to a topographic polarisation within the city landscape in relation to rivalries between groups that do not remember an event in the same way, or do not commemorate it for the same purposes. In the first section, we start by exploring the array of commemorative events after the 11-M attacks, with special focus on the differences between official memorials and grassroots memorials, and follow with an analysis of their spatial dynamics. In the second and third sections, we move to the results of our investigation, based primarily on ethnographic observations of the different memorial sites from the second to the seventh anniversaries of the 11-M attacks, and in particular those around the Atocha train station, from 2005 to 2011. We show how tensions and rivalries around memorial sites that appear in the anniversaries progressively constructed a polarised topography of 11-M memories in the Spanish capital.

Domaines: Science politique; Sociologie

Gérôme Truc, Cristina Sanchez-Carretero. Polarised Topography of Rival Memories: The Commemorations of the 11th March 2004 Train Bombings in Madrid. Stig Sorensen Marie-Louise; Viejo-Rose Dacia; Filippucci Paola. Memorials in the Aftermath of Armed Conflict. Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, Palgrave Macmillan, pp.33-60, 2019, 978-3-030-18090-4. ⟨halshs-03097172⟩