III Seminar – Regiocat 2

Exceptionally, the seminar will be done in an online format. To participate, you must first sign up here http://symposium.uoc.edu/go/regiocat2.

Aquesta imatge té l'atribut alt buit; el seu nom és recortables.png

First  Session, Thursday, may 6th from 4 pm to 6 pm

In the 1950s, Spain was present in three consecutive editions of the Triennale di Milano. At that time, it was the most important international exhibition in terms of decorative arts and architecture. Industrial design, the aesthetics of consumer goods and the modern home capitalized the attention of these events, in an economic context of European recovery and socialization of consumption and in the political-cultural framework of the Cold War.

The official Spanish pavilions stood out and were recognized for their unsuspected modernity. This episode opens a series of questions that should be clarified. Where did that audacious modernity come from that uncovered another face of Spain beyond isolation and autarky? How did these pavilions play the cards of the dialogue between tradition and modernity in such a convincing way in a context so unfavourable for the presentation of the Spanish reality? What was the pro-Franco administration’s commitment to promoting and endorsing those pavilions in terms of cultural diplomacy? How were these “bets” not freed from ambiguities and internal tensions in the administration itself? And, finally, what kind of impact did this experience have on the evolution of the pro-design movement in Spain and on its relations with the administration on the threshold of developmentalism?

  • 16:40 Response by the UOC associate professor Ana Rodríguez Granell
  • 17:00 Break
  • 17:10 Debate moderated by UOC associate professor Muriel Gómez
  • 18:00 Closing

Second Session, Thursday, may 20th from 4 pm to 6 pm

The importance of nation-states is not a natural fact but arose from the liberal revolutions of the late 1800s and, especially, during the nineteenth century. Precisely, the study of this process in Mallorca, from the Napoleonic invasion in 1808 to the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, in 1923, allows us to analyze how Majorcans adopted – and internalized – codes of conduct that put Spanish identity first, based on the State and in the Castilian culture, to any other, among them the Catalan-Majorcan. The process was led by various agencies, such as war conflicts, the expansion of the peripheral administration basically in charge of the municipalities, politicians and local notables, the proliferation of national symbols, schooling, the Catholic Church, the labor movement. and regionalism. In general, the Spanishization was carried out both through coercive measures and the will of the citizens themselves; without forgetting the ambivalent weight of history. 

  • 16:40 Response by the UOC associate professor Joan Fuster Sobrepere
  • 17:00 Break
  • 17:10 Debate moderated by UPF associate professor Alfons Aragoneses
  • 18:00 Closing