Scenes from historical memory become tourist products.
Girona, February 2017
Through its Culture and Identity Club, the Costa Brava Girona Tourist Board promotes the dissemination of heritage resources, the remains and historical legacy of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War, which have become cultural tourism products and strengthen the destination’s positioning.
The most outstanding places of this kind include:
- The MUME (Exile Memorial Museum), in La Jonquera
- The Interpretation Centre of the Catalan Cultural Exile, in Agullana.
- The Monument to Exile and Canta Mine, in La Vajol.
- The Coll de Lli, in La Vajol, a mountain pass which was the gateway to France for exiles in 1939, including such prominent Republican figures as Companys, Negrín and Azaña.
- The Coll de Manrella mountain pass, in La Vajol, with the monument to president Lluís Companys.
- The Walter Benjamin Memorial, by the Israeli architect Dani Karavan, and the association Passatges de Cultura Contemporània.
- The Retreat Museum, in Camprodon: a private collection of weapons from the Civil War, open to the public.
- The airfield (free entrance), the shelter and the museum of the building La Fàbrica in Celrà.
- The air raid shelter from Girona’s Jardí de la Infància.
- The bunkers in Roses.
Along the same lines, one of the outstanding cultural activities in this field is provided by the company Hiking & History, whose route “Paths of Exile” is a form of cultural and historical memory tourism in the Eastern Pyrenees, hiking along the paths and border crossings used by the exiles.