Barcelona’s Montjuïc Castle opened two new exhibitions on 5 June 2026 at noon, adding to the city’s democratic memory programme. The shows, funded with Next Generation European Funds, are housed in fully renovated exhibition spaces, according to Barcelona City Council.
The two exhibitions are Living, Coexisting, and Surviving: International Brigades and Multilingualism and SEAT: Factory of Transformations. The first is in the former Military Museum rooms, while the second is in the recently rehabilitated new Guardhouse.
Living, Coexisting, and Surviving: International Brigades and Multilingualism presents research by University of Barcelona historians Ramon Naya Ortega and Lourdes Prades Artigas. It looks at language learning and the fight against illiteracy among international volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, using archive sources, memoirs and contemporary press, much of it produced by the brigadists themselves.
The exhibition focuses on how a multilingual community lived and worked together despite language and cultural differences. It also highlights the educational, cultural and human aspects of the International Brigades. Prades Artigas directs the CRAI Library of the Republic Pavilion at the University of Barcelona and leads the SIDBRINT project, while Naya Ortega is an archivist there and a researcher for the same project.
SEAT: Factory of Transformations examines how the company shaped Catalonia beyond the car industry, with effects on the economy, urban planning, architecture, culture and politics. The exhibition traces the factory’s role in industrialising the Zona Franca, the growth of a modern industrial community in what is now La Marina, and SEAT’s place in the Franco regime during a period of economic opening.
The SEAT exhibition also looks at worker control, clandestine workers’ commissions and the labour struggles that fed the democracy movement. It highlights the strike of 18 October 1971, which ended with a police occupation of the factory and the fatal shooting of worker Antonio Ruiz Villalba. Curators Laia Soldevila and Jordi de Miguel, both linked to CRÍTIC SCCL, also worked on other historical and documentary projects.
Barcelona City Council says the wider programme uses exhibitions and public events to promote democratic memory, create spaces for debate and connect past processes with current challenges. Other shows in the same cycle include After Franco, What Then? at La Model, open until 19 July, and The Catalan Women’s Conferences, open until 26 July. For more local coverage, see our news page.
