Carabanchel, the Demolition and the Construction of Memory

Abstract

The old Prison of Carabanchel is destroyed to eliminate a space that leads us to remember a conflictive and revolutionary moment in national history. In this paper, through a reading of the still empty space of the prison, I will talk about the past that is intended to be destroyed; about the present from which the national narrative is reconfigured with such destruction; and about a future that points to a non-retributive justice proper to the law of historical memory. The emptiness that occupies what was once the prison allows us to access a non-chronological experience of time that challenges the past-present-future separation of the law; in addition to building a non-normative memory that opens to a justice-to-come.