The shadow of horror in the National Heritage

Abstract

Life flows as if it were a novel, and many narrations are interrupted by events that turn into a traumatic episode. The strategies to deal with it are different for each person; but their attitude is reflected in the way they act in certain situations, or in relation to activities or objects that remind of the sufferings endured. Surviving a concentration camp is, without a doubt, a very traumatic experience. More than a million people spent an average of five years in one of the almost three hundred concentration camps that existed throughout the Spanish territory, many of which were raised in existing buildings, some even National Monuments. The current essay, through the study of the different extermination and re-education franquist camps, and through the application of a psychological methodology, elaborates an architectonic and social classification of the different attitudes that we can adopt regarding a controversial patrimonial building. Because the attitude with which we confront our traumas also reflects the attitude with which we interact with a monument marked by the shadow of horror.