Introduction

The Memorial Centre for the Victims of Terrorism opened its doors in June 2021 in Vitoria-Gasteiz, the capital of the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC), in an act attended by the Spanish monarchs, Felipe VI and Letizia, the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the Lehendakari (the President of the Basque Government), Iñigo Urkullu. The State-sponsored Centre finds its origin in the Recognition and Comprehensive Protection of Victims of Terrorism Act (2011) which contained a mandate to establish a National Victims of Terrorism Memorial Centre in the BAC. The Memorial Centre, located in the city’s historic quarter, is mainly composed of a museum and a documentation centre although it also funds research projects and participates in national and international dissemination activities. The foundation was created with the aim of ‘preserving and disseminating the democratic and ethical values embodied by the victims of terrorism, building the collective memory of the victims and raising awareness among the population as a whole for the defence of freedom and human rights and against terrorism’ (BOE n.229, 23 November 2011, article 57).

Nonetheless, the creation of the Memorial Centre has not been exempt from controversy and its opening has not been celebrated by all actors. During the inauguration event, hundreds of people gathered near the Memorial Centre to show their rejection of the Centre and denounce its ‘discriminatory’ character (eitb.eus, 2021). The protest was organised by Memoria Osoa [the Whole Memory] which is a network that brings together fifteen victims’ and memory associations from the BAC and Navarre. According to Memoria Osoa, the Memorial Centre constitutes ‘an attack on coexistence’ because it excludes ‘thousands of victims of police or State violence’ and addresses the collective memory in a ‘fragmented’ way by banishing from it a large part of the suffering (Memoria Osoa, n.d.). Besides reflecting the social unrest that the Centre generates in some individuals and communities, the polemical inauguration also illustrates the political character of institutional processes of memorialisation.

Drawing on memory studies literature, this chapter begins by introducing memorials and museums as powerful sites of ‘inscription’ (García González, 2019: 145) and conflict ‘curation’ (Reeves & Heath-Kelly, 2020; Sylvester, 2019). These sites are understood as devices that construct an official memory (or a mnemonic hegemony, Molden, 2016) through various mechanisms including the production of particular narratives and frameworks. Then, the chapter explains how the adoption of a discourse analysis approach is useful to investigate the role of language in the exhibition panels and audio-visual pieces that constitute the memorial site. This section also highlights the importance of analysing absence and omission to better comprehend the crucial role of silence in the (re)construction of (violent) pasts. Thus, the analysis of the memorial centre simultaneously draws on a discourse analysis of the exhibition panels and audio-visual materials as well as on an analysis of silence based on the ‘typology of silences’ proposed by Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi and Chana Teeger (2010: 1104). The last part of this section also includes notes on auto-ethnography as a valuable approach in exploring the ‘multisensorial stimulation’ that the memorial space offers to visitors (see Reeves, 2018: 112) and reflecting on the researcher’s subjectivity and positionality.

The following section shows how the memorial museum seeks to construct an official memory through the establishment of the terrorism vs. democracy framework to comprehend the past and imagine the future. The analysis shows how this framework is strategically produced through the employment of particular vocabularies and narratives, the use of ‘overt’ and ‘covert’ silences (Vinitzky-Seroussi & Teeger, 2010: 1108), and multisensorial experiences. The chapter argues that this construction of the past aligns memory with an ‘orthodox’ counter-terrorism framework (Franks, 2009) and the recent development and globalisation of Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) policies (Kundnani & Hayes, 2018). My analysis reveals that the memorial museum curates the past in a manner that paves the way for the continuation of a (global) counter-terrorism approach and implementation of whole-of-society extremism prevention policies. The chapter concludes with the examination of some counter-memories and/or vernacular mnemonic initiatives and their potential to disrupt the official memory and create alternative ways of understanding (violent) pasts. The overall idea is that different manners of remembering and/or curating the past will offer us different ways of dealing with present (and future) political conflicts.

Just a Memorial Museum?

Museums and memorials have traditionally been regarded as ‘cultural’ rather than ‘political’ elements, and therefore, have most often been ignored and/or marginalised in political analysis. In long-established (Marxist) interpretations, culture has been comprehended as a realm where political and economic conditions are reflected upon rather than constituted and/or negotiated (Turner, 2005). Nonetheless, moving beyond the traditional conceptualisation of power that underpins this approach, cultural theorists and memory scholars describe memorials and museums as key sites where particular knowledge(s), power relations, collective identities and memories are constituted and negotiated (see Bratich et al., 2003; Reeves, 2018; Sylvester, 2019). From this perspective, the analysis of memorials and museums not only gains importance, but becomes indispensable in the task of investigating (past) conflicts and examining broader political processes. Thus, museums and memorials have a significant political role, as in the controversies following the inauguration of the Memorial Centre for the Victims of Terrorism and the ongoing plans for the creation of other museums and memorials in the Basque Country demonstrate.

This chapter departs from the idea that memorials and museums are important (socio-political) venues where ‘public truths’, discourses, and narratives about the past, but also about particular realms such as war, peace, and security are established (Sylvester, 2019: 45). An analysis of memorials and museums involves questioning ‘whose memories […] feature in public displays’ and whose memory is ‘sidelined or ignored’ (Sylvester, 2019: 45). A critical examination of a memorial museum requires us to question whose voices and experiences are being heard and whose perspectives, knowledge, and experiences are being cast as valid and valuable within the mnemonic walls. Drawing on Segato’s analysis of law, Andrea García González describes museums and commemorations as ‘spaces of inscription’ where some experiences of violence obtain institutional and public recognition and some actors are ‘inscribed’ a particular ontological status in the aftermath of a violent conflict (2019: 145). By showing and narrating particular experiences of harm and pain, memorials and museums inscribe the subjects who fit in the displayed definitions of violence as ‘victims’, while they exclude other actors from this category and the official narration (García González, 2019). Thus, by inscribing some actors as victims and others as perpetrators, by giving voice to some accounts of the past and by actively silencing others, we could say that memorials and museums ‘curate’ conflicts (Reeves & Heath-Kelly, 2020). The curation of a conflict then depends on which actors, experiences, and memories are included and how they are portrayed. As Reeves and Heath-Kelly (2020) warn, the way in which a conflict is curated does not only impact on the constitution of collective memories of the past but will also have important consequences for present and future politics.

For this reason, memorials and museums have been referred to as key ‘mnemonic device[s]’ through which political elites attempt to use the past to serve their present interests (Teeger, 2014: 69). For Teeger (2014), museums, monuments, and rituals illustrate the efforts of national and other elite actors to build a collective memory that benefits their political agenda. This thesis was previously defended by John Bodnar (1992) who distinguishes between ‘official’ and ‘vernacular’ cultures. According to Bodnar, cultural leaders try to establish an ‘official culture’ by orchestrating commemorative events that ultimately serve to eliminate the existence of ‘social contradictions’ and alternative views and memories (1992: 15). Thus, cultural leaders craft official accounts of the past with the aim of promoting values, emotions and ideas that will reinforce the status quo and serve to regulate individuals’ political behaviour (Ibid.). Recent memory studies literature also stresses the social and individual impacts of the representations of the past (see Reeves, 2018). For instance, Teeger’s research shows how individuals actively use ‘collective representations of the past to construct their present-day beliefs […] and attitudes’ (2014: 70). A governmentality studies perspective also insists on the impacts of commemorative events and memorials on an individual-scale and proposes to view them as ‘techniques of government’ that create and promote particular identities and patterns of individual behaviour (Antweiler, 2023: 4).

It is from this theoretical framework that this chapter presumes that, far from disinterestedly re-telling the past, the Memorial Centre for the Victims of Terrorism plays a key role in the so-called ‘battle of narratives’ that is being fought in Spain and the Basque Country, particularly since ETA announced a permanent ceasefire in 2011.Footnote 1 As Alvarez-Berasategi and Hearty note, in Northern Ireland and the Basque Country where debates about ‘how to deal with the past […] remain a burning issue in the process of conflict transformation […] the past has become war by other means’ (2019: 20). This ‘battle’ is not only a ‘struggle to determine what happened in the recent past’ (Sagardoy-Leuza, 2020: 304), but as memory scholars remind us, memory also speaks to the present and future (Achugar, 2008). As Schacter puts it, memory is composed of tales and/or ‘products of what we recall from the past, believe about the present, and imagine about the future’ (1996: 308). In other words, the construction of a collective and/or social memory is an active and dynamic process in which different actors attempt to establish a dominant or hegemonic account of the past, as in Molden’s (2016) mnemonic hegemony, which has significant social and political implications both in the present and future. As a result, an examination of the representation of the past in the Memorial Centre for the Victims of Terrorism gives an account of the dynamic and political character of the processes of memorialisation and enables us to critically inquire into the interests of political elites and actors. It also enables us to scrutinise how particular lenses to read the past prescribe and/or legitimise determined politics. The following section explores the value of a discourse analysis approach and an analysis of silence to investigate the official reconstruction of the past and its political implications.

Investigating Words, Silences, and the Researcher’s Presence

The Memorial Museum consists of exhibitions and commemoration spaces that have been carefully designed with particular presentations, written text, audio-visual materials, and art. For this reason, an analysis that encompasses different mediums requires a flexible methodological approach able to grasp different devices (such as information panels, objects, and artefacts) as well as how they speak to each other (the whole picture). This section explains how a discourse analysis approach is combined with an examination of the use of silence to investigate the construction of the past in the Memorial Museum. The section also contains ideas on auto-ethnography as an approach for affirming and reflecting on the presence of the author in the research process.

A Critical Discourse Approach (CDA) enables me to explore how written and spoken language is used to signify the past and constitute identities, practices, relationships, politics, and knowledge in the Memorial Museum (Gee, 2010). Challenging the assumption that language is used to objectively describe the world, CDA stresses its constitutive character and its role in constructing reality (Barker & Galasiński, 2007; Fairclough, 1992). On this basis, a critical analysis of the language employed in the exhibition panels and audio-visual materials sheds light on how the Memorial Museum actively produces particular objects, identities (such as the terrorist), and knowledges of the past. As literature on critical studies on terrorism reveals, analysing discourse provides us with insights on how the employment of particular terms and narratives can result in particular ways of understanding political violence, the acceptance of determined policies, and production of social consensus (see Bogain, 2017; Jackson, 2005; Lule, 2004). From this perspective, the chapter approaches the written and spoken text (which constitutes one of the main mediums of the Memorial Museum) as one of the main mechanisms through which memory is constructed.

However, sometimes looking at the words and narratives employed in mnemonic representations of the past is not enough, since its opposite (lack, absence, and/or silence) also plays a key role in the construction of collective memory (Vinitzky-Seroussi & Teeger, 2010). This is also the case in the Memorial Museum, where next to various devices I could see many absences and hear strident silences. Silences can serve to ‘set the limits on what is speakable or unspeakable about the past’ (Vinitzky-Seroussi & Teeger, 2010: 1107) and curate conflicts. Silence plays an important role in the constitution of events and actors and actively shapes the memory and understanding of the past, present, and future. My analysis of the memorial museum employs the ‘typology of silences’ proposed by Vinitzky-Seroussi and Teeger (2010: 1104) as an analytical tool to explore which public truths and collective memories are being established about the violent past, and particularly about (counter)terrorism.

In the classification of silences, Vinitzky-Seroussi and Teeger (2010) distinguish between overt and covert silence. Whilst overt silence is easier to identify because it is characterised by a literal absence of speech and narrative on a particular topic, covert silence is harder to identify because is covered and/or veiled by mnemonic talk and representation. Covert silence is a more sophisticated mechanism to enhance forgetting (or remembering in a particular way) that occurs when narratives about the past are simplified (for instance by silencing certain interpretations of the past) to enable the acceptance of a particular narrative by a broader public (Vinitzky-Seroussi & Teeger, 2010). Thus, while overt silence could be translated into not addressing the elephant in the room, covert silence would be characterised by addressing it, but in a way in which its importance and magnitude get minimised and/or lost (Ibid.). Nonetheless, the authors also highlight that on some occasions, such as sacred and ritualised minutes of silence, overt silence can also be used to enhance remembering.

Listening to certain silences and detecting some absences already reveals the fact that our ways of knowing and researching are ‘embodied’ and ‘based on past experiences and life trajectories’ (Reeves, 2018: 113). Carrying out a critical analysis of the Memorial Museum also shows a personal interest in and a preoccupation with the subject. Instead of concealing this fact, an autoethnographic approach re-affirms the ‘presence of the author’ (Fitzgerald, 2015: 170) who is frequently ‘written out of research despite the fact that they are central to the production of knowledge’ (Brigg & Bleiker, 2010: 784, cited in Fitzgerald, 2015: 169). An autoethnographic approach acknowledges that social research is always historically, culturally, and politically situated (Reeves, 2018). As Edward Said put it, knowledge is not non-political, but it ‘is produced by scholars [who] cannot detach themselves from the circumstances of life’ (Said, 1978, in Garcia González, 2019: 56). Audrey Reeves’ work also stresses the usefulness of this method to explore the affective experiences and multisensorial stimulations that curators and designers carefully crafted in museums (Reeves, 2018: 122). Since my visit to the museum did not consist of an emotionless walk through the exhibitions and memorials (nor reading texts and looking at photographs without feelings), my research required me to make an effort of consciousness and try to elucidate the affective stimulations and emotions that all these devices, particularly commemorative spaces, sought to produce on me as a visitor.

When I walked into the memorial museum in April and November 2022, I did it as a social scientist interested in the intersection between politics and memory, but also as an individual who has a particular life trajectory and experiences about the past in the Basque Country. I looked at the exhibitions as an individual with a particular social position, and a set of beliefs, knowledge, and desires. I walked through and analytically looked at the exhibitions and memorial spaces as an individual who has listened to, witnessed, and lived experiences directly related to the so-called Basque conflict, but also other meaningful episodes external to it. Taking an autoethnographic approach encouraged me to reflect on how my personal circumstances determined the experience of my visit to the memorial as well as my analysis of the site. Instead of regarding this subjectivity as cause of a flawed analysis and an obstacle towards creating valuable research, auto-ethnography contends that a first-person account of the Memorial Centre in Vitoria/Gasteiz might provide an opportunity to challenge ‘dominant discourses’ (Gupta, 2017: 451), ‘speak back (and perhaps differently)’ (Denshire, 2014: 845) and, ultimately, to ‘generat[e] dialogue’ (Gupta, 2017: 451) or contribute to ongoing discussions.

Building a ‘Mnemonic Hegemony’: Dominant (Re)Constructions of the Past, Present, and Future

This section starts with a brief description of the museum and its main exhibitions and commemorative spaces with the aim of providing the reader with an overview of the Memorial Museum.Footnote 2 The analysis and discussion that follows is divided into two sections. The first section explores the political framework ‘terrorism vs. democracy’ identified in the analysis of the exhibitions and commemorative spaces, and the second discusses its socio-political implications, particularly the legitimisation of counter-terrorism and introduction of a radicalisation prevention approach.

The Museum

The museum occupies two floors in the Memorial Centre building which was originally constructed to host a new branch of the Bank of Spain in 1920. The first floor is divided into four main spaces; as the visitor enters, there is a memorial space where images and videos of reports of different terrorist attacks carried out in Spain and people narrating their memories and reflections about these events are projected on three walls. On both sides of these walls, by the ramps, there are two interactive spaces: on one side, visitors are encouraged to leave notes and reflections of their visit at the ‘Messages’ table’ and on the other, there is an area with computers where visitors are invited to play a game (this is discussed further in the following section). This memorial space leads to a room titled ‘The History of Terrorism’ which consists of a timeline (mainly composed of text and illustrated with few pictures) that goes from 1960 to ‘Terrorism Today’. This space gives access to an installation that recreates the place where Jose Antonio Ortega Lara (a former prison officer) was held captive by ETA activists between 1996 and 1997 and to an additional commemorative installation. This commemorative space consists of a long and narrow dark tunnel in which medals that represent the ‘victims of terrorism in Spain’ hang from the ceiling and pictures of the underaged victims are projected at the end. The second floor is divided into four main sections. First, visitors access a room titled ‘Hate Speeches and Practices’ which is divided into four subsections dedicated to different types of terrorist organisations: ETA and radical nationalist terrorism; the extreme right and vigilante groups; the extreme left; and Jihadist terrorism. This room leads to another main exhibition on the second floor titled ‘The Response to Terror’ which contains sections such as ‘the political response’, ‘the social response’, and ‘the judicial response’. This is followed by a space titled ‘Victims’ Voices’ where visitors can listen to and read testimonies of mainly family members of victims of terrorist attacks, and a final space that hosts temporary exhibitions (which, due to its changing nature, is not included in this analysis).

The Terrorism vs. Democracy Framework

The memorial museum actively participates in the ‘battle of narratives’ (or ‘conflict of narratives’)—which scholars (Alvarez-Berastegi, 2017; Garcia González, 2019; Murua, 2017a; Zenova, 2019) have often referred to in the context of the ‘Basque conflict’ over the last years—by actively framing the (violent) past in terms of terrorism vs. democracy. In this discursive battle where multiple views and perspectives exist, overall, two dominant and antagonist interpretations pervade. According to one interpretation, not only past violent actions but, more generally the past (and present) should be comprehended in terms of an (ongoing) political conflict in which different actors are (and have historically been) involved.Footnote 3 In this account, the main actors of the conflict are often divided into two big groups, with those who claim the Basque Country’s self-determination and/or seek independence from the Spanish and French states on one side, and those who oppose it and defend a unified and indivisible Spain and France on the other. Yet there is another perspective within this approach that stresses the inner dimension of conflict, i.e., between Basque actors and within the Basque Country (Mees, 2020)Footnote 4. According to the other main narrative, the past should not be understood in terms of a ‘political conflict’ but rather through the lenses of terrorism. Exponents of this narrative identify ETA’s existence as the only struggle/trouble at the same time that they ‘deny the existence of, or dismiss the importance of, a political conflict as a source of ETA’s existence and persistence and regard the Basque group as a purely terrorist issue’ (Murua, 2017b: 94). Understanding the existence of these main positions in the ‘battle over the narrative’ is important because this section details how the memorial museum re-produces the second interpretation (the socio-political conflict denialist) and seeks to construct a collective memory through the logic of terrorism vs. democracy.

The construction of an official memory shaped by the terrorism vs. democracy lenses is executed mainly through the constitution of two oppositional and antithetical identities: the terrorists and the democrats/victims. This is done through written (and spoken) text and a strategic employment of silences and affective stimulations. The discourse employed in the exhibition panels (re)produces this dichotomy by repeatedly referring to terrorists as fanatics and enemies of democracy. In contrast, victims are represented as the categorical opposite of terrorism and as the ‘embodiment’ of democracy and freedom.Footnote 5 The construction of this dichotomy becomes notorious when in the ‘History of Terrorism’ exhibition, ETA is still characterised as the ultimate expression of anti-democracy and violence even if during the 1960s and part of the 1970s, the activity of the organisation occurred in the context of a fascist military dictatorship. Curating the past through the terrorism vs. democracy framework requires hiding and dismissing the antidemocratic and violent nature of Franco’s dictatorship. This is the reason why the ‘History of Terrorism’ timeline starts in 1960, in the middle of a violent and repressive dictatorship, instead of with the military coup in 1936 or the establishment of Franco’s regime in 1939.Footnote 6

The terrorism vs. democracy discourse is not only discursively crafted but it is constructed with the simultaneous employment of overt and covert silences. Overt silence occurs when the violence exerted during different historical periods, particularly during the military coup, the civil war, and the dictatorship is absent from the exhibition’s timeline and the museum’s commemorative spaces. Inscribing ETA and other non-state organisations (such as DRIL) as the only violent actors who employed terror demands hiding the tens of thousands of executions, tortures, incarcerations, and forced disappearances committed from 1936 to 1975 from the sight of national and international visitors.Footnote 7Establishing the ‘terrorism against democracy’ framework also involves an overt and covert use of silence aimed at denying and/or dismissing the importance of the violence committed by the Spanish State (and organisations with links to it) during the so-called ‘transition’ period (1976 to 1982).Footnote 8

The use of silence to successfully build the terrorism vs. democracy framework critically requires that numerous and systematic acts of violence and human and civil rights violations committed during the democratic period are written out of the memorial (such as the systematic use of torture by the state security forces) and/or their magnitude is minimised. This is the case of the GAL (a right-wing paramilitary group and/or death squad established by officials of the Spanish government to fight ETA and repress the Basque independentist movement from 1983 to 1987) whose presence in the memorial is nearly anecdotical, despite its seriousness both from a political and a humanitarian perspective (covert silence).Footnote 9 Thus, it is only by actively concealing the political violence exerted by the state during the authoritarian and democratic periods that an ‘orthodox terrorism’ (Franks, 2009; Jackson et al., 2011) discourse (reproduced in the oppositional binary terrorism vs. democracy) can survive.Footnote 10 This has far-reaching consequences for the numerous victims of these acts of political violence who are not mentioned and/or recognised (inscribed) as victims and whose lives are not grievable (see Butler, 2009) in the commemorative space. While their memory is wiped out from the Memorial Museum and the memory of the visitors, the guarantees of justice, repair and non-repetition are thwarted too. To this end, it is noticeable that the confluence between overt and covert silences, i.e., how the concealment of violence (overt silence) is aided by the simplification of narratives that makes an account of the past more acceptable and/or palatable for wider audiences (covert silence).

The production of a terrorism vs. democracy framework to remember the past not only requires that the museum does not identify the dictatorship and state violence as ‘terrorism’, but importantly demands that the violent acts of organisations identified as ‘terrorist’ are treated as essentially different from those committed by the state. This is because according to the ‘orthodox’ conceptualisation of terrorism (Jackson et al., 2011) and/or the ‘new terrorism discourse’ dominant since 9/11, terrorism is an identity rather than a rational political strategy that can be employed by different actors including states (Stampnitzky, 2014: 140). As a result, in the same way that some actors cannot escape or transcend their terrorist identity (i.e., they will always be the Other ‘unspeakable Evil’ [Zulaika & Douglass, 2008: 32]), others (no matter the similarity of their actions) can never be considered terrorists.

The museum’s subscription to this dominant understanding of political violence becomes apparent when a panel informs the visitors about the existence of four waves of terrorism since the nineteenth century (identified as anarchist/nihilist; nationalist/anticolonial; new left; and religious fundamentalism) while state terrorism—which has posed far more serious problems than non-state terrorism in terms of human and material destruction (Jackson et al., 2011: 175)—is categorically excluded. Interestingly, far-right terrorism is not mentioned either in this historical summary of global terrorism nor in the ‘New security challenges in the twenty-first-century’ panel which exclusively focuses on ‘Jihadist terrorism’. While the ‘Hate Speeches and Practices’ exhibition dedicates a brief space to ‘far-right terrorism’, it only mentions attacks committed in foreign countries which problematically inscribes far-right’s political violence as something from the past and/or external.Footnote 11

Politics for the Present and the Future: Counter-Terrorism and a Whole-of-Society Counter-Extremism Approach

This section explores the political implications that the Memorial Museum’s construction of the past has for present and future politics. As Charlotte Heath-Kelly and Laura Fernandez de Mosteyrin indicate, over the last years the past has been interpreted through contemporary ontologies of terrorism (i.e., the new terrorism discourse and/or the orthodox framework) with the aim of legitimising ‘the introduction of new policies’ in Spain (2021: 10). This section contributes to this thesis first by showing how the (re)construction of the past through the terrorism vs. democracy framework results in the reinforcement of counter-terrorism as the only possible option to respond to (violent) political conflicts. Second, by discussing how this curation of the past smooths the path for the introduction of counter-extremism policies and advances a whole-of-society radicalisation prevention approach as the next logical step.

Lessons from the Past: A Global Counter-Terrorism Approach

The homogenisation of different organisations that employ(ed) political violence and indistinguishability of their actions and victims in exhibitions and commemorative spaces (which are largely dedicated to the ‘victims of terrorism’ without providing any further contextualisation) has two important effects. First, it problematically decontextualises and depoliticises insurgent groups/armed organisations and second, it supposes that every conflict and expression of political violence should be met with the same (counter-terrorism) strategy. In other words, by eliminating the differences between organisations labelled ‘terrorist’, the Memorial Centre proposes a common understanding of all these groups/actors and their acts and a common response to all of them. Encompassing and reducing all the actors and their acts to the label of ‘terrorist/terrorism’ involves decontextualising both the actors and their acts, ignoring and/or regarding as unimportant aspects their origins, socio-political characteristics, grievances, aims, internal disputes, historical developments, transformations, and relationship with other national and international actors, organisations, and historical events and processes, etc. The oversimplification of complex historical and socio-political contexts and the merging of actors and events results in the depoliticisation of political violence. This is also done discursively by explaining to visitors that ‘all terrorist organisations have a number of elements in common: political intent, fanaticism and the use of violence to terrorise their opponents’ (Centro Memorial de las Víctimas del Terrorismo, n.d.c). Although the memorial concedes that terrorist organisations differ in their ‘ideology or their tactics’, this is considered a trivial/unimportant detail when it comes to the application of a common (global) counter-terrorism response (ibid.). Otherwise, it would not make sense that the exhibition that examines different ‘types’ of terrorist organisations is followed by a unique ‘Response to Terror’ gallery.

The representation of terrorism as a ‘global phenomenon’ constitutes another essential component in the Memorial Museum’s reconstruction of the past. Even if the memorial focuses on events that took place within the Spanish State, the museum manages to frame these events and actors as part of a ‘global phenomenon’ (global ‘waves’). By framing terrorism as essentially global, ripping it out from its local roots, history, and logics, the Memorial Museum makes a global response to terrorism—an international counter-terrorism strategy aligned to the Global War on Terrorism military campaign initiated by the US in the aftermath of 9/11—to be seen as the only alternative. Thus, this construction of memory establishes counter-terrorism as the only possible response to political violence.

This is also done through the employment of overt silence: First, the museum, and particularly the exhibition ‘Responses to Terror’, actively ignores the existence of reconciliation and peace processes (such as in Northern Ireland and Colombia) as examples of peaceful (and durable) violent conflict resolution strategies. Second, the museum hides from the viewers the existence of key local processes and events—such as the Declaration of Brussels (March 2010) and the Donostia-San Sebastian International Peace Conference (October 2011)—in which important local and international figures (including former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and well-known individuals with long experience in the resolution of political conflicts, such as the Irish and South African cases) promoted a (political) resolution to the Basque conflict that would also end with the political violence. Even if these events have been regarded as milestones in the consecution of ETA’s decision to announce a permanent ceasefire and its dissolution (see Mees, 2020; Murua, 2017a; Zabalo & Saratxo, 2015), the Memorial Museum does not consider episodes like this (external to the counter-terrorism logic) relevant enough to be included in the reconstruction of the past. For instance, this is illustrated with the exhibition’s insistence on the importance of the counter-terrorism cooperation with France which is regarded as a key factor in ETA’s defeat. The terrorism vs. democracy framework, ultimately, does not see conflicts that can be negotiated and peacefully resolved, only enemies who must be defeated.

Reading the Past/Future Through the (Counter)Radicalisation Discourse

This section explores how the official memory is also being constructed through terrorism prevention discourse which, as it is discussed, has important political implications for present and future politics. The exhibition panel explains to the visitors that the cause and origin of all the terrorist organisations is a ‘similar radicalisation process’ (Centro Memorial de las Víctimas del Terrorismo, n.d). Furthermore, the museum reproduces stereotypes of the radicalisation discourse by portraying terrorism as the result of ‘manipulation’ and terrorists as individuals who have been mentally/ideologically abused by their ‘family, friends, the internet, a political faction or a combination of these factors’ (see Kundnani, 2012; Rodrigo Jusué, 2023). For instance, a panel states that ‘terrorist organisations usually have ideologues sympathetic to their cause who […] justify violence, defend those who use it and help create a community of followers’ (Centro Memorial de las Víctimas del Terrorismo, n.d.c). As critical literature on counter-radicalisation and de-radicalisation policies shows, by focusing on individual cases of radicalisation, the radicalisation discourse eliminates social conflicts and legitimises mass-surveillance initiatives in everyday spaces including the workplace, the family home, and schools, such as the British Prevent Strategy (see Baker-Beall et al., 2016; Heath-Kelly, 2016; Rodrigo Jusue, 2023).

Depicting terrorism as the result of a ‘radicalisation’ process seeks to legitimise and create social consensus towards counter-radicalisation and counter-extremism policies and strategies (CVE) developed over the last fifteen years or so (Kundnani & Hayes, 2018; Martini and Fernandez de Mosteyrin, 2021). This construction of the past not only proposes to extend counter-terrorism to new spaces, but also promotes the multiplication of counter-terrorism actors under the argument that, since radicalisation happens everywhere, everyone should play an active role in preventing it. Victims in particular are fabricated as key counter-terrorism actors and their testimonies regarded as the most effective counter-narratives (Heath-Kelly and Fernandez de Mosteyrín, 2021). But this narration of the past not only seeks to recruit the victims in the counter-terrorism industry, the whole-of-society approach is palpable when visitors are repeatedly demanded to become active in countering terrorism and become part of what the exhibition panel calls ‘the righteous’.Footnote 12

It is not a coincidence that in the area that invites visitors to play a video game, terrorism is depicted as a ‘mental control virus that spreads quickly’. The game contends that anyone can become ‘vulnerable to sympathise with terrorist ideas’ and thus, encourages visitors to prevent the spread of the virus in a High School. This idea of contagion is also reproduced in the exhibition panels which explain that other nationalist organisations in Spain emerged because they sought to ‘imitate’ ETA, suggesting that armed organisations are created due to an irrational contagious reaction. Thus, it is evident how the radicalisation discourse generally re-depoliticises conflicts and political violence in particular. It is important to note that the introduction of a radicalisation prevention approach focused on countering extremism would pose serious obstacles to Spanish democracy and the resolution of the Basque conflict. Since in this framework in which terrorism is understood to be an identity (rather than a violent strategy), the introduction of an extremism vs. non-extremism counter-terrorism approach would result in the criminalisation of individuals, organisations and segments of the society that hold and defend political ideas and/or projects associated with terrorist organisations (i.e., independentism, Islam, socialism, the protection and promotion of the Basque language, etc.).

Whilst this would not entirely constitute a new phenomenon—the so-called ‘everything is ETA’ strategy widely applied from the 1990s already resulted in the banning of political parties, closure of Basque media outlets, and macro-summaries against individuals who were part of cultural organisations, such as the 18/98 (see Letamendia, 2011)—the introduction of counter-extremism policies would signify a clear commitment to the revival of this approach. The criminalisation and persecution of activities, individuals and organisations would fan the flames of unresolved conflicts, once again polarise society, and reinstate a scenario of repression that favours the violation of human and civil rights. In other words, refocusing the national security lenses towards countering ‘extremism’ (for instance, targeting what the exhibition panel labels as ‘separatist radicals’) as the Memorial Centre seems to encourage would risk not only prolonging and intensifying long-existing conflicts (in which there is ‘terrorism without terrorists’, see Sagardoy-Leuza, 2020), but would also pose serious obstacles for democracy, negatively impact on the fragile trust between actors, and endanger coexistence.

Conclusion: Alternative Memories and the Democratisation of the Past

A critical analysis of the Memorial Centre for the Victims of Terrorism reveals its role as a key site where particular knowledge(s) about the past, but also about the present and the future, are constituted. Analysing the employment of discourses, silences, and multisensorial experiences in the exhibitions, the inquiry shows how the Memorial Museum should be comprehended as a locus of political relevance where conflicts are ‘curated’ (Reeves & Heath-Kelly, 2020) and actors are ‘inscribed’ a determined ‘ontological status’ (García-González, 2019: 145). In other words, the Memorial Centre seeks to establish a hegemonic memory (Molden, 2016) according to which the past should be read through the lenses of an orthodox terrorism discourse (Franks, 2009; Jackson et al., 2011). Setting up this frame not only requires the employment of over-simplified narratives and the concealment of determined (violent) acts (particularly those committed by state officials) and victims who do not fit into the institutional representations of victimhood, but also implies the negation of the existence of political conflicts (and complex political processes). The analysis shows how this reconstruction of the past proposes a (global) counter-terrorism logic and response as the only legitimate and effective way to approach (violent) conflicts. Importantly, the analysis also reveals how this mnemonic space lays the foundation for the introduction and normalisation of counter-radicalisation and extremism prevention policies. Actively ruling out alternative ways to understand and deal with (violent) conflicts (such as negotiation, reconciliation and peace processes), a counter-extremism and counter-radicalisation approach extends counter-terrorism to new physical (such as the workplace, home, and education centres) and temporal (pre-criminal) spaces, with the aim of recruiting civilians to a national security project (a whole-of-society approach). This move arguably risks polarising society and reinstating a scenario of criminalisation and repression that not only would endanger coexistence but would also favour the violation of human and civil rights.

Nonetheless, silences can be broken, narratives challenged, and ‘official’ memories contested. Street protests against the Memorial Centre call into question its neutrality and have the capacity to generate dialogue about the past and the role of memory in the present. The existence of counter-memories, ‘alternative public memories’ (Sylvester, 2019: 54) and/or vernacular memories (Bodnar, 1992) in the Basque Country becomes evident by the burst of grass-root memory initiatives over the last years. These initiatives include street performances and demonstrations, murals, guided visits, artworks, music, films and documentaries, workshops, historical archives, documentation centres, and research projects. In the absence of the establishment of a Truth Commission that would ‘analyse the causes and consequences of the conflict and violations which took place as part of it’ (in Zernova, 2019: 661), a wide range of projects by numerous organisations including the platforms Memoria Osoa, Euskal Memoria Fundazioa, Egiari Zor Fundazioa, Memoria Gara, and Foro Soziala have been launched in the Basque Country. For instance, the Permanent Social Forum (2018) created a ‘comprehensive cartography of suffering’ with the aim of fostering coexistence, ‘contributing to the peace process and facilitating the resolution of the consequences of the conflict’ (Foro Soziala, 2018: 5). This report identifies multiple experiences of pain which are often forgotten and/or dismissed from hegemonic accounts of the past, providing valuable knowledge to understand violent conflicts and their consequences (see also García González, 2023). Martxoak 3 Elkartea [3rd of March Association] also illustrates the potential of grassroots memory associations to challenge official accounts of the past through popular initiatives in the public space and disseminate collective memories that demand truth and justice.Footnote 13

Some of these initiatives have also been promoted by public institutions, such as the research project to investigate and recognise (state) crimes and compensate the victims of torture and ill-treatment committed between 1960 and 1978 in the BAC and Navarre (see Carmena et al., 2013; Etxeberria et al., 2017). Currently, there are also new memorial spaces being developed, including Martxoak 3 memorial to remember the massacre in which five workers were killed and over a hundred were injured by the police during a general strike in Vitoria-Gasteiz in 1976, and Gogoragunea exhibition space and memorial promoted by the Basque Institute for Memory, Coexistence and Human Rights (Gogora) in Bilbao. All these initiatives reveal the dynamic and political character of memory as well as the crucial role of alternative and vernacular memories in the process of ‘democratising the past’ (Zernova, 2019: 661). Since memory and memorials shape the ways in which the past and present are understood and the future is approached, it is necessary to investigate the potential of counter-memories and/or vernacular memories to create (alternative) understandings of the past that enable social change and enhance coexistence and peacebuilding.