A series of exhibitions entitled “Europe 25” will open in Barcelona this month

From September 2014 up to January 2015 the Barcelona City Council has programmed a series of exhibitions entitled Europe 25 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. The Deputy Mayor for Culture, Knowledge, Creativity and Innovation, Jaume Ciurana, and the organiser of the series, journalist Martí Anglada, presented the programme in a press conference, highlighting above all the goal of the series, which is to further knowledge of the event from the perspective of the last quarter century and examine both how the events came about and how they affected the lives of many Europeans.

The series includes five exhibitions. From the 1st of October to the 15th of January, the Castell de Montjuïc will play host to a photographic exhibition entitled “Rumania flashback”, a portrait of Romanian society during the final years of the Ceaușescu dictatorship by Andrei Pandele and Florin Andreescu. From the 23rd of September to the 23rd of November, the Virreina Centre de la Imatge will host a series of photos by Ryszard Kapuściński portraying the former Soviet Union republics between 1989 and 1991 under the title “The Decline of the Empire”. Meanwhile, visitors to the Capella de Santa Àgata between the 15th of October and the 11th of January will have the opportunity to visit an exhibition entitled “Latvia: The struggle for freedom”. By means of a collection of objects and photographs the exhibition examines the processes that led to the restoration of the de facto independence of the Republic of Latvia in 1991.

For its part, between the 28th of October and the 4th of January the El Born Centre Cultural will host an exhibition entitled “Hungary, the crack in the Iron Curtain”, which includes photographs by Ernö Horváth dealing with the events that, between 1988 and 1989, led to a change of political regime in the country. Finally, in the Fabra i Coats creativity factory during the month of November, “Wir sind das Volk” (We are the People) will offer an artistic action featuring Ignasi Blanch, the only Catalan artist to have painted a mural on a piece of what remains of the Berlin wall, and Thierry Noir, a French-born artist determined to protect the artistic memory of the wall.

In addition to the exhibitions, the sculpture Espai Havel, dedicated to the writer and ex-president the Czech Republic, Václav Havel, has been on display in the Parc de la Ciutadella, close to the Catalan parliament, since last February and the Born Centre Cultural will feature a seminar on the Berlin Wall on the 3rd and 4th of December. The Barcelona City Council has organised these exhibitions in collaboration with, among others, the Latvian, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian and Czech consulates in Barcelona.