"Exiles. The intertwined red threads" at MUME vindicates and dignifies the role of exiled republican women

MUME presents Exiliades from March 11 to September 3, 2023. The intertwined red threads is an exhibition that traces the imprint of 20 profiles of exiled women from different political, professional and social backgrounds. The exhibition vindicates and dignifies the role of exiled republican women. The gender perspective allows a leading role, that of exiled women, often forgotten when interpreting exile.

The exiles of 1939 faced a double exclusion: the one they had as women and the one derived from their status as political refugees. And they faced it with the tools they had at hand, their training or their political militancy, the support networks or the financial resources they had. But beyond what made them unique, they shared a common way of seeing the world - owed to the social and civil rights achieved during the Republic - and made mutual support, solidarity and cooperation the basic strategies for survival . Their biographies are basically examples of resistance and fidelity to their commitments.

The curator of the exhibition, Teresa Fèrriz Roure, has had the collaboration and documentation of the documentary filmmaker Felip Solé and the 24-Août-1944 Association of Paris, through the its president, Véronique Salou Olivares.

The exhibition shows, at the same time, the depth of the trauma that exile entailed, especially for women. Through their trajectory we see the position and recognition that many of them had during the Republic and how exile becomes a traumatic break. For most of them, neither the merits nor the position they had in their places of origin are of use to them and they are forced to start from scratch in the host societies.

The present memory of the exiled women, that of these that we gather in the exhibition and many more that will continue to be made visible and studied in the coming years, thus becomes an irreplaceable part of our democratic memory.