The campaigners ask the council of the city of Madrid not to abandon the plans to create a museum on the site immortalized in a Robert Capa a photograph that captured fascist bombing raids in the early days of the Spanish Civil War.
On another trip to Spain towards the end of 1936, he brought the price of the American-Hungarian war bomb damage to a house in the working class of Madrid around Vallecasthe roof and front were torn by shrapnel and the street outside peppered with debris.
He took a picture of 10 Peironcely Street, which on a winter’s day faced the devastation inflicted by one of the German or Italian bombers who were helping with the children of the General’s French troops, sitting outside smiling on the pavement and carrying the woman who was protecting them. Capa had not for the first time found humanity in the midst of horror and custom.
While the image appeared in the contemporary US, the Swiss and French press, exposing the civilian attack and becoming one of the most enduring images of the civil war, enjoyed long afterlife.
For the past seven years Except Peironcely X platformThe Fundación Anastasio de Gracia, supported by trade unionists Capa, used the connection to preserve the cramped, dilapidated building and to get the current residents into better accommodation.
In 2018, Madrid’s city council – then led by left-wing mayor Manuela Carmena – announced a plan to expropriate the property for €500,000 and rehouse its tenants. Describing Peirncely 10 as “a testament to Spain’s recent history”, the council also announced plans to turn the site into a center to commemorate what had happened there.
“When” [the expropriation] finished process, our idea is that this building will become a center of memory where the work of Roberto Capa could be displayed, “José Manuel Calvo, then councilor for sustainable urban development, said at the time.
“Of course, we will discuss and agree with the collectives who advocated the protection and conservation of this building, which is so important to the memory of this city.”
Fast forward six years and the city council, now run by the conservative People’s Party (PP), seems to be having second thoughts. Although the building was expropriated and rebuilt by its tenants, the general director of the council for heritage told a recent planning meeting that the Capa museum idea was “a conceptual proposal and not an architectural draft”.
The council said no decision would be made on the future use of the building until it was renovated. “At the moment, the plan is to restore the building, which is in a very fragile state,” the spokesman said. Notice. “After completing those works, it will be decided on the use that best matches the technical conditions of the building.”
The lack of any mention of Capa – or a possible memory center or museum – is a reminder of the soldiers who are so difficult to save the building and its history.
“You feel pretty wasted after all the years and all the work we’ve invested in this,” said Jose Maria Uría of the Fundación Anastasio de Gracia. “We have always proposed – and we still propose – that this should become the Robert Capa Center for the interpretation of the aerial bombing of Madrid.”
Uría takes particular issue with the council’s suggestion that the site could serve as a multi-use cultural space. Not only is it too small, he says, it is also a much larger cultural center, complete with a huge auditorium, a few hundred meters away.
“He is now disgraced,” he said. “In 2018, the city council decided to create a center. It is also here that no one undertakes a building project unless he knows what is the purpose of the building and its use. You don’t build a house and then start thinking about where the kitchen and bathroom and all the power points are going to go. Come on! Design for use. It feels like they are taking us for fools.
Uría shows another contradiction: in 2021, Madrid seriously recognized the importance of the history of the house – and the Capa image – with a copy of the most famous photographs in the Reina Sofía museum. The show proceedednot far from the room where Picasso’s Guernica hangs.
“We display that photograph proudly in a globally famous museum, while at the same time we look down on the place itself,” Uriah said. “They say the place needs to be preserved. But what? Why should it be saved? The cover photo is due! Separating the building from the photo makes no sense – and [the museum] it would also be a motor of economic and cultural growth for the province.
The House of Peironcely does not build only to find itself in the middle of a public tug-of-war. In 2019, Spain’s socialist government was criticized by its opponents the French remains to be removed from the hulking mausoleum that was once the Valley of the Fallen. Last month, the central government began the process of designating the old Real Casa de Correos in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol – today the seat of the Madrid Regional Government – as a “place of remembrance” to commemorate those who were tortured there by Franco’s assassins.
But the idea was rejected by the PP, which promised legal action to stop the plan. “Trying to associate this historic building with Francoism is a real shame,” the regional government said. “The Real Casa de Correos is more than 250 years old and has witnessed many events that our city and our region have accomplished.”
Many inside and outside of Spainhowever, the buildings transcend certain partisan interpretations and speak of a more universal human suffering.
Cynthia Young, former curator Robert Capa Archive at the International Center of Photography in New York, believes that a Capa center in the building will honor its history – and invite national and international visitors, as well as useful ones. barrio the whole city
Although almost 90 years have passed since Capa took his picture – and although the bombing of civilians increased during the Spanish Civil War has become one of the hallmarks of modern warfare – his image has lost none of its power. And neither have the bricks and mortar of No-10 Peirncely Street.
“There’s incredible power in the child’s perspective — that they’re not always the victims,” says Young.
“In some ways, I think it’s a picture of great hope, which is so much of what Capa was trying to photograph during the war… I see so much in the history of the building as well. Most of that entire area felt torn down at one point or another during the 80s or even before, but this building has stood for a while for a surprising reason.