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Thursday, 24 January
Session 1
Radical Citizen and Aesthetic Politics
An introduction to the Spanish Transition as a critical device. The myth and its different counternarratives. The conceptual aporias of the 1970s: citizen/State, history/memory, aesthetics/history, politics/culture, counterculture/official culture. Five transitional models: heroic, melancholic, civic-popular, memorial and necropolitical. Networks of counterculture and the civic-popular paradigm: relationships between social movements and cultural actionism in the 1970s. Citizen forms and ephemeral aesthetics. Documentary devices and memory.
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Friday, 25 January
Session 2
Poetics of Democracy
This session is structured around a conversation between the Museo Reina Sofía’s Rosario Peiró, Lola Hinojosa and Carla Giachell.
Architecture from the exhibition The Poetics of Democracy. Images and Counter-Images from the Spanish Transition. The Venice Pavilion of 1976 and mutations from the Anti-Franco cultural field. Curatorial archaeology and exhibition machines. Street documents: artistic forms of social movements. The new transitional left and its historical subjects: feminisms, neighbourhood associations, neighbourhood culture and the libertarian movement. Counterculture and its spaces: festivals, hangouts and magazines. A transitional subject: dangers to society, psychiatric patients and gender dissidents. Vampire imagery from the Transition. Figures and forms of constitutional culture.
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Monday, 28 January
Session 3
The Sides of Shadows. Critical Aesthetics from the 1970s
This session is structed around a conversation with Anxo Rabuñal, curator of O lado da sombra: sedición gráfica e iniciativas raras ou desacreditadas entre 1971 e 1989 (A Coruña, Seoane Foundation, 2005).
A curatorial history of Iberian countercultures (i). The Sides of Shadows: the story of a Galicia-based exhibition project. Alternative genealogies: centre-periphery dynamics in the transitional archive. Seville, Galicia, Barcelona and the Basque Country: centrifugal and centripetal logics of 1970s countercultures. Artistic and exhibition devices from counterculture in Galicia, between the popular and the avant-garde: publishing, poetry, music and performing arts. Félix Guattari and Allen Ginsberg in Santiago: the history of Conxo and the impossible archive of transitional anti-psychology. Iberian-Galician machines for living: the curatorial circulation of Llorenç Soler, Anna Turbau and César Portela.
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Wednesday, 30 January
Session 4
Prohibited Archives. The Impossible Imaginary of the Democracy
Memory and form in post-Francoism: the formal construction of hegemonic accounts of the Transition and capturing civil imaginaries from the 1970s. Co-opting, erasing, displacing and resemantization: formal mechanisms of the foundational discourse of democracy. The privatisation and nationalisation of collective heritage. A curatorial history of Iberian countercultures (ii). Lines of shadow: underground continuities, interposed inheritances and civil re-appropriations of 1970s forms. Ephemeral Transition archives today: online archivists, citizen memories and network culture in the crisis of the 1978 regime. Other transitions: remakes and revivals.
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Thursday, 31 January
Session 5
Oral Memories and the Democracy to Come
This session constitutes a survey of urban space in the Transition, in the form of a critical-memorial wander around Madrid’s Malasaña neighbourhood with a testimony mediation.
The Transition and its (non)places of memory. Institutional memory and underground memories of the (post)transitional city. The visible and invisible marks of counterculture in public space. The Movida Movement and the city-Movida: an urban account of the spatial metamorphoses from the Maravillas neighbourhood to present-day Malasaña. From neighbourhood struggles to fights against gentrification: political mutations of space in the shift towards immaterial capitalism. Plaza Dos de Mayo and its civic and national monumentalities. Archaeologies of the glance and the poetics of testimony: accounts and figures of 2 May 1977. The history and memory of a transitional icon: the photography of Félix Lorrio.
A Change of Aesthetics: Citizen Ruptures in the Spanish Transition
A course conducted by Germán Labrador
Held on 24, 31 ene 2019
This course, with its design rooted in the exhibition The Poetics of Democracy. Images and Counter-Images from the Spanish Transition, explores the imaginary of 1970s Spain from a central hypothesis: the articulation, in the confrontation with Francoism and post-Francoism, of citizens’ breakaway resulting from an upsurge in certain aesthetic practices. Through these practices, new political subjects were shaped in opposition to the regime’s institutions and forms of discipline. This other society included women, young people, neighbourhood groups and “dangers to society”, the last of which refer to the Francoist Law that stigmatised those considered a menace to the regime, from beggars to homosexuals. In parallel, the emergence of this multifarious civil society and its struggles for emancipation questions the limits of the dictatorship and the transition to democracy, its practices producing and organising alternative forms of culture and social and urban models, in addition to ways of life referred to here inside this framework as ‘transitional’. The documents of such actions and proposals constitute a democratic archive, susceptible to questioning, in exhibition terms, and intervened in from the present. Thus, to think about the transitional legacy means to reflect upon the origins, devices and limits of democracy, and imagine its possible transformations.
Across five sessions and in conversation with other voices, Germán Labrador Méndez, a professor and researcher of Cultural Studies at Princeton University, sets forth a critical survey of the accounts of democracy founded through the tension between archive and myth, challenging predominant expectations surrounding the period through diverse analytical strategies. Oral memory and documents from other transitions which occurred at the time (neighbourhood, youth, autonomous, psychiatric, gender…) speak of unrepresented historical experiences in the official foundational discourse of post-Francoism and the utopian potential they possess with respect to an alternative citizen genealogy.
Consequently, drawing on the exhibition The Poetics of Democracy. Images and Counter-Images from the Spanish Transition as a critical and methodological tool, this course explores aesthetic mechanisms from 1970s Spain to focus on their transformative potential. Approaching the crossroads between culture and politics in the framework of a democracy still to come, discussions will revolve around notions of public space, the urban experience, aesthetic ruptures, the subversion of daily life, bio-literature, civil imagination, generational destruction and ephemeral memory. Moreover, the issue of transient cultural forms – minor and often anonymous – will thread together the different sessions, each analysing the way in which a time of civil conversation, the occupation of public space, the affirmation of subaltern political subjects or aesthetic disputes involve the questioning of democracy.
The sessions will take place both in the Museo, in a lecture room and in different exhibition rooms, and in Madrid’s Malasaña neighbourhood, in wanderings around and explorations of the city. Upon the conclusion of the course, on Friday 1 February, the Museo will go on to hold the conference Abductions of the Imagination. A Conference on Post-Francoism Counterculture, a public activity centred on examining Spanish counterculture during the Transition.
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía
Participants
Course director
Germán Labrador Méndez is head professor in the Spanish and Portuguese Department at Princeton University. His research in the field of cultural history specialises in the relationship between aesthetics and politics, citizenship and memory in a contemporary Iberian context. He is the author of Letras arrebatadas. Poesía y química en la transición española (Devenir, 2009) and Culpables por la literatura. Imaginación política y contracultura en la transición española (1968-1986) (Akal, 2017), and is currently writing a paper on the political and cultural responses to the 2008 crisis and working on an anthology of underground poetry. He is also one of the curators of the exhibition The Poetics of Democracy. Images and Counter-Images from the Spanish Transition.
Participants
Carla Giachello is an intern in the Museo Reina Sofía Collections Department and assistant curator of the exhibition The Poetics of Democracy. Images and Counter-Images from the Spanish Transition.
Lola Hinojosa is a curator of Performing Arts and Intermedia at the Museo Reina Sofía and co-curator of the exhibition The Poetics of Democracy. Images and Counter-Images from the Spanish Transition.
Rosario Peiró is head of the Museo Reina Sofía Collections Department and co-curator of the exhibition The Poetics of Democracy. Images and Counter-Images from the Spanish Transition.
Anxo Rabuñal is a curator and researcher. He is the curator of O lado da sombra: sedición gráfica e iniciativas ignoradas, raras ou desacreditadas entre 1971 e 1989 (Luis Seoane Foundation, 2005), a show which seeks to trace popular culture in the non-institutional scene in Galicia at the end of Francoism and during the Transition.
![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
Aesthetics of Peace and Desertion Tactics
8 October 2025 – 24 June 2026
The study group Aesthetics of Peace and Tactics of Desertion: Prefiguring New Pacifisms and Forms of Transitional Justice proposes a rethinking—through both a theoretical-critical and historical-artistic lens—of the intricate network of concepts and practices operating under the notion of pacifism. A term not without contestation and critical tension, pacifism gathers under its name a multiplicity of practices—from anti-militarism and anti-war movements to non-violence activism—while simultaneously opening urgent debates around violence, justice, reparation, and desertion. Here, pacifism is not conceived as a moral doctrine, but as an active form of ethical and political resistance capable of generating aesthetic languages and new positions of social imagination.
Through collective study, the group seeks to update critical debates surrounding the use of violence and non-violence, as well as to explore the conflict of their representation at the core of visual cultures. In a present marked by rearmament, war, genocide, and the collapse of the social contract, this group aims to equip itself with tools to, on one hand, map genealogies and aesthetics of peace—within and beyond the Spanish context—and, on the other, analyze strategies of pacification that have served to neutralize the critical power of peace struggles. Transitional and anti-punitive justice proposals will also be addressed, alongside their intersections with artistic, visual, and cinematic practices. This includes examining historical examples of tribunals and paralegal activisms initiated by artists, and projects where gestures, imaginaries, and vocabularies tied to justice, reparation, memory, and mourning are developed.
It is also crucial to note that the study programme is grounded in ongoing reflection around tactics and concepts drawn, among others, from contemporary and radical Black thought—such as flight, exodus, abolitionism, desertion, and refusal. In other words, strategies and ideas that articulate ways of withdrawing from the mandates of institutions or violent paradigms that must be abandoned or dismantled. From feminist, internationalist, and decolonial perspectives, these concepts have nourished cultural coalitions and positions whose recovery today is urgent in order to prefigure a new pacifism: generative, transformative, and radical.
Aesthetics of Peace and Tactics of Desertion, developed and led by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Studies Management, unfolds through biweekly sessions from October to June. These sessions alternate between theoretical discussions, screenings, work with artworks and archival materials from the Museo’s Collection, reading workshops, and public sessions. The group is structured around sustained methodologies of study, close reading, and collective discussion of thinkers such as Judith Butler, Elsa Dorlin, Juan Albarrán, Rita Segato, Sven Lütticken, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Franco “Bifo” Berardi; historical episodes such as the anti-nuclear and anti-arms race movement in Spain; and the work of artists and activists including Rojava Film Commune, Manuel Correa and the Oficina de Investigación Documental (Office for Documentary Investigation), and Jonas Staal, among other initial cases that will expand as the group progresses.
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.