The Year of the Discovery

“I was born in the city of Murcia although I have lived in Madrid since I was eighteen. A large part of my childhood was spent visiting my paternal grandparents, who had ended up living in Cartagena for employment reasons. Cartagena is a military port which has rivalled the capital for a thousand years. When I was seven years old, we spent a day in class colouring a stencil of the recently inaugurated brand-new regional parliament. Its eclectic architecture was striking for the time and all the children enjoyed painting the stencil with garish colours. It was new and attractive and represented the maturity of Murcia as a Community deserving a Statute of Autonomy. The effigy of the façade was stamped on my mind while I was colouring it in. This is why I especially remember the day it was burned.

I was eleven at the time and, like the rest of the country, I was overcome with enthusiasm for the events of 1992, the year in which Spain was presented as a brand new modern country before the international community. I remember seeing the inauguration of the Olympic Games and feeling part of a future world economic power, as the news readers were saying in these last years of crisis, the image of a parliament burning came back to mind now that the Congress of Deputies has been surrounded by fencing and police for months.

When I asked my father, or mother, or my family in Murcia how they experienced the burning of our region’s parliament in the neighbouring city – the city where my grandparents lived – they looked at me questioningly. What was I talking about exactly? What year did I say this happened? Was I sure I did not invent this? For me, the burning of the autonomous parliament was the other side of 1992.”

– Luis López Carrasco, Director