Held on 11 jul 2023
This session, the fifth in the series organised with the research group TURICOM, sets out to explore the relationship between tourist imaginaries and the visual arts from the 1960s onwards. The activity looks to reflect on the difficulty, and urgency, of imagining a world after, or beyond, tourism, with the programme comprising a compendium of brief lectures and a subsequent presentation of specific case studies by architecture and urbanism teams involved in re-wilding environments affected by tourism exploitation.
On one side, the tourist industry’s carbon footprint positions it as one of the main forces of environmental transformation; on the other, the touristification of urban centres lays bare its devastating impact on housing, neighbourhood fabric and local trade. Nevertheless, in Spain the tourism-progress-modernisation equation, which began under Francoism, still dominates the institutional logic of the State to a large degree.
This session thinks about the need to jettison that which presents itself as inevitable. The task of recomposing relations and ecologies in a hypothetical post-tourism scenario means to pinpoint practices from which to learn and sensibilities to enhance; thus a series of architectural and artistic interventions are discussed which provide us with tools and images to cultivate other (im)possible worlds.
6pm
Lectures
—Presented by José Díaz Cuyás
After the Party: The Provincial Pavilions at the International Country Fair in Madrid
With Ramón Vicente Díaz del Campo Martín-Mantero
An exploration of how ephemeral architecture at international fairs is disconnected from the events that gave it meaning and purpose, offering us a first possible image of post-tourism.
Modernity and Progress, Made in the USA. Progress follows fiasco
With Cristina Arribas
The future lives of constructions offered by an image of progress provide a unique point of view from which to question the relationship between modernity, architecture and environment. This relationship is expressed fundamentally in the visual language of postcards and, more specifically, in the construction of the Mediterranean coast as a space of progress according to representational codes imported from the USA.
Dirty Beaches. Equipo Crónica and the End of (Tourist) Utopia
With Julián Díaz Sánchez
The counter-image of the tourism, modernity and progress equation can be found in the series Paisajes urbanos (Urban Landscapes) by Equipo Crónica, where the beach appears more as a place of emptiness and waste.
7:15pm
Case Studies
—Presented by Isaac Marrero
Presentation of n’UNDO (Madrid)
With Verónica Sánchez Carrera
This case study analyses the project to deconstruct and recover the Algabarrico beach in Almería. It constitutes a financial, ecological and pedagogical project of coastal recovery i.e. the (re)construction of relationships between citizens and environment through the dismantling of an infrastructure declared illegal, but which lingers on, regardless. By way of different social, environmental, technical and economic approaches, the idea of turning hotels into a centre of environmental recovery via workshops with different areas is set forth here, and with the priority involvement of local spheres, thereby establishing a benchmark model of innovation and development.
Presentation of Life Pletera (Girona)
With Xavier Quintana Pou and Esteve Subirah
An exposition of the de-urbanisation and environmental restoration project which has managed to ensure the recovery of La Pletera (Girona), a marshland of significant environmental worth that was partially urbanised at the end of the 1980s, but has been left abandoned since the 1990s. Inside the framework of this project, a series of artistic interventions are incorporated under the heading Lloc, memoria i salicornies, giving rise to a reflection on a complex landscape and considering the same idea of regeneration as a problem through an approach to the memory of place.
8:15pm
Q&A Session
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía and TURICOM. The Tourist Experience, PGC2018-093422-B-I00
Collaboration
Inside the framework of
Participants
Cristina Arribas is an architect and urban planner at Badalona City Council, and a professor in the Department of Theory and History at the Escola Tècnica Superior d'Arquitectura de Barcelona (ETSAB). Her recent publications most notably include “El nuevo paisaje turístico español a través de las tarjetas postales de los años 60” (The New Landscape of Spanish Tourism Through 1960s Postcards) in Sobre, issue 5 (2018) and “La puesta en escena del paisaje turístico español en el boom desarrollista” (The Mise en Scène of the Spanish Tourism Landscape During the Developmentalist Boom), in La ciudad en el cine (Asimétricas, 2022).
José Díaz Cuyás is a professor of Aesthetics and Art Theory at the University of La Laguna. With Carmen Pardo and Esteban Pujals, he curated the exhibition The Pamplona Encounters 1972: The End of the Party for Experimental Art (Museo Reina Sofía, 2009–2010). His most recent publishing projects include coordinating issue 10 (on art and tourism) of the magazine Concreta and the publication “Movilizados por lo real: turistas, soldados, artistas” (sobre Marcel Broodthaers) [Mobilized by the Real: Tourists, Soldiers, Artists] (on Marcel Broodthaers), in Arquitectura: lenguajes fílmicos (2009-2016) (Tabakalera, 2018).
Ramón Vicente Díaz del Campo Martín-Mantero is an art historian, a professor of Contemporary Spanish Art and an exhibition curator at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM). His central works revolve around the architect Miguel Fisac, the subject of his doctoral thesis, and his publications most notably include articles and texts which approach different aspects of Spanish art during the 1950s and 1960s.
Julián Díaz Sánchez is a lecturer in Art History at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM). He is the author of, among other works, Políticas, poéticas y prácticas artísticas. Apuntes para una historia del arte (Catarata, 2009), La idea de arte abstracto en la España de Franco (Cátedra, 2013) and Pensar la historia del arte. Viejas y nuevas propuestas (Universidad de Zaragoza, 2021).
Xavier Quintana Pou is a lecturer of Ecology at the Institut d’Ecologia Aquàtica from the Universitat de Girona. He is also the director of Càtedra d’Ecosistemes Litorals Mediterranis, which aims to contribute to the study, management and recovery of natural spaces in Bajo Ter. Within this framework, he has carried out different ecological restoration projects in coastal wetlands, for instance the project Life Pletera.
Isaac Marrero is a professor of Anthropology at the Universitat de Barcelona. His publications include The Art of Dissent: Adventures in London’s Olympic State (Marshgate Press, 2012), with Hilary Powell, and Reassembling Activism, Activating Assemblages (Routledge, 2019), with Denise Milstein and Israel Rodríguez-Giralt.
Verónica Sánchez Carrera is an architect who currently lectures on MA and post-graduate courses at different universities. She also works for the World Health Organisation (WHO) on emergency infrastructures for infectious diseases. She is the co-founder of the n´UNDO organisation and the technical office n’OT | Global-Human-Environment.
Esteve Subirah is a visual artist who investigates issues of representation related to memory and landscape, combining documentary and conceptual practices. He has participated in different exhibitions and projects like Lloc, memòria i salicornia inside the context of the de-urbanisation of La Pletera with the in-situ and permanent intervention Forma 26 Pletera and Fingers Crossed (ADN Platform), a collective show curated by Blanca de la Torre and Sue Spaid which tackles the current ecological crisis.
![Miguel Brieva, ilustración de la novela infantil Manuela y los Cakirukos (Reservoir Books, 2022) [izquierda] y Cibeles no conduzcas, 2023 [derecha]. Cortesía del artista](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/ecologias_del_deseo_utopico.jpg.webp)
![Ángel Alonso, Charbon [Carbón], 1964. Museo Reina Sofía](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/perspectivas_ecoambientales.jpg.webp)
Más actividades
27th Contemporary Art Conservation Conference
Wednesday, 4, and Thursday, 5 March 2026
The 27th Contemporary Art Conservation Conference, organised by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Department of Conservation and Restoration, with the sponsorship of the MAPFRE Foundation, is held on 4 and 5 March 2026. This international encounter sets out to share and debate experience and research, open new channels of study and reflect on conservation and the professional practice of restorers.
This edition will be held with in-person and online attendance formats, occurring simultaneously, via twenty-minute interventions followed by a five-minute Q&A.
Submitting Proposals
The deadline for presenting proposals ends on 28 September 2025. Those interested must send an email to jornada.conservacion@museoreinasofia.es, submitting the following documents:
- An unpublished proposal related to the conservation or restoration of contemporary art.
- A 1,700-word summary, written in Word, on the theme addressed. Please indicate the topic at the top of the document with five keywords and the presentation format (in-person or virtual). Preference will be given to the in-person format.
- CV and contact details.
- Only one proposal per person will be accepted.
- Proposals related to talks given in the last three conferences will not be accepted.
Proposals may be submitted in Spanish, French or English and will be evaluated by a Scientific Committee, which will select the submissions to be presented during these conference days and will determine their possible participation in a subsequent publication, the inclusion of which will undergo a second and definitive evaluation by the Editorial Committee.
For submissions in a virtual format, participants must send a recording following certain technical requirements they will receive once participation is confirmed.
The programme of sessions will be published in the coming days.
Rethinking Guernica
Monday and Sunday - Check times
This guided tour activates the microsite Rethinking Guernica, a research project developed by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Collections Area, Conservation and Restoration Department and the Digital Projects Area of the Editorial Activities Department, assembling around 2,000 documents, interviews and counter-archives related to Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica (1937).
The visit sets out an in-situ dialogue between the works hung around the painting and a selection of key documents, selected by the Museo’s Education Team and essential to gaining an idea of the picture’s historical background. Therefore, the tour looks to contribute to activating critical thought around this iconic and perpetually represented work and seeks to foster an approach which refreshes our gaze before the painting, thereby establishing a link with the present. Essentially revisiting to rethink Guernica.
UP/ROOTING
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 NOV 2025
Museo Reina Sofía and MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) invite applications for the 2025 iteration of the School of Common Knowledge, which will take place from November 11th to 16th in Madrid and Barcelona.
The School of Common Knowledge (SCK) draws on the network, knowledge and experience of L’Internationale, a confederation of museums, art organizations and universities that strives to reimagine and practice internationalism, solidarity and communality within the cultural field. This year, the SCK program focuses on the contested and dynamic notions of rooting and uprooting in the framework of present —colonial, migrant, situated, and ecological— complexities.
Building on the legacy of the Glossary of Common Knowledge and the current European program Museum of the Commons, the SCK invites participants to reflect on the power of language to shape our understanding of art and society through a co-learning methodology. Its ambition is to be both nomadic and situated, looking at specific cultural and geopolitical situations while exploring their relations and interdependencies with the rest of the world.
In the current context fraught with war and genocide, the criminalization of migration and hyper-identitarianism, concepts such as un/belonging become unstable and in need of collective rethinking:
How can we reframe the sense and practice of belonging away from reductive nationalist paradigms or the violence of displacement? How to critically hold the entanglement of the colonial routes and the cultural roots we are part of? What do we do with the toxic legacies we inherit? And with the emancipatory genealogies and practices that we choose to align with? Can a renewed practice of belonging and coalition-making through affinity be part of a process of dis/identification? What geographies —cultural, artistic, political— do these practices of de/centering, up/rooting, un/belonging and dis/alignment designate?
Departing from these questions, the program consists of a series of visits to situated initiatives (including Museo Situado, Paisanaje and MACBA's Kitchen, to name a few), engagements with the exhibitions and projects on view (Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture from Panafrica), a keynote lecture by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, as well as daily reading and discussion gatherings, editorial harvest sessions, and conviviality moments.
Ylia and Marta Pang
Thursday, 6 November - 8pm
The encounter between Spanish DJ and producer Ylia and visual artist Marta Pang is presented in the form of a premiere in the Museo Reina Sofía. Both artists converge from divergent trajectories to give form to a new project conceived specifically for this series, which aims to create new stage projects by setting out from the friction between artists and dialogue between disciplines.
Situated Voices 36
Thursday, 16 October 2025 – 7pm
Territorio Doméstico is a feminist collective made up of female domestic and care workers who live in the Community of Madrid. They form a cross-border space which responds to a number of urgent problems: defending labour rights for female domestic workers and demanding the regularisation of migrant workers, as well as the right to family reunification, social recognition and the reparation of care debt by institutions.
The collective will provide accompaniment in this encounter by putting forward a cross-sectional round-table discussion centred on professional illnesses suffered by specific collectives of women doing jobs that are predominantly physical, such as care and domestic work and farm work. The aim is to shine a light on the physical and psychological tolls these body-oriented jobs take on the people that do them, in addition to the scant social, legal and healthcare recognition they receive.
Professional illnesses for women are often not recognised as such and are diagnosed simply as common illnesses, and with everything that entails on a legal and administrative level. Furthermore, obtaining sick leave can often become a huge struggle, thereby breaching labour rights.
The Museo Situado assembly convenes to discuss this reality, granting it the space it deserves to collectively call for solutions which respect the rights of all female worker.