A letter from Manchester

Equally, it could be from all the other cities and countries of the world that highlight what they have and what Spain lacks, writes columnist Cristina Vallejo

Cristina Vallejo

Malaga

Friday, 4 April 2025, 15:35

This is a letter from Manchester after a visit to its People's History Museum. But it could equally be from Buenos Aires, Lisbon, Santiago de Chile, the old cotton plantations of the southern United States, a café in Budapest near the House of Terror, the Museum of Communism in Prague, the Museum of Liberation in Rome or all the other cities and countries of the world that highlight what they have and what Spain lacks. Or what it is trying to do, but in fits and starts, with obstacles to overcome that can be summed up in one: there is no shared democratic memory or common narrative about this country's recent past. There is still no official space on a scale commensurate with the facts and their importance that tells locals and visitors what happened during the war, the dictatorship or the Transition.

Fascination and a little envy can be felt in the People's Museum of Manchester, which traces the history of the struggle for freedoms in British society from the Peterloo Massacre (1819) - see Mike Leigh's film on the subject - to the present day with the incorporation of the fight for rights, visibility and the recognition of all identities.

The achievement of the vote for men, the demands of the suffragettes with Emmeline Pankhurst at their head, the construction of the trade unions and the labour movement, the rise and fall of political parties and the emergence of social campaigning... All this is told there. And schoolchildren go with their teachers and their worksheets to fill in.

Manchester is a pioneering city and the paradigm of the Industrial Revolution. And another museum, the Museum of Science and Technology, recalls both its successes, in which it was at the forefront, and its failures, its imbalances, inequalities, slavery in overseas lands and the exploitation and overcrowding of the local population on which the manufacturing boom rested. The plight of the working class in this northern English city was the subject of Engels' writings and the cause of the early development of trade unionism. And part of that history is treasured in the Working Class Movement Library in Salford, a place that leapt into universal popular culture with The Smiths.

It is a duty to preserve history, memory, heritage - including industrial heritage, with a city increasingly made of glass but still with a lot of brick - and the spaces intended to store all this must be alive, open to society and reviewed, helping us to evaluate ourselves. This is even done in art galleries where posters warn that the treatment or vision offered by certain works is not acceptable when seen through the eyes of the present, especially with regard to women and ethnic stereotypes. What is most striking, though, is the critical eye with which the British imperial past is revisited without accusations of a lack of patriotism.

These are essential ingredients of progress: to tell our stories, to know and evaluate one other. Progress requires making amends and repairing the past. This is what is needed if our increasingly diverse societies are to be cohesive and not fractured.

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