The artist Mateo Mate installed 25 prints with the names of Francoist leaders on one wall and 22 of cultural or republican personalities on the adjacent wall to reflect on the relationship of citizens with their own past; His work does not leave anyone indifferent and there are those who have acted on it.
Historical Memory is a very present memory, because to close wounds you must have tools to suture them. With a concept that hovers around these and other ideas, the artist Mateo Mate placed a series of plaques like those on any street in Madrid on the two walls of a corner of the Pueblo Nuevo neighborhood, in the Ciudad Lineal district. On the wall of Llanos de Escudero street, coup leaders and Francoists. In the one on the left, on Berastegui Street, prominent figures of literature, art and culture in general during the Second Republic or the subsequent exile.
Mate carried out this artistic intervention, called Right Facade – Left Facade, in December 2020. He had the support of the owners of the two ground floors whose facades he takes, real estate developers who have invited other artists to shape several of their properties. , although never with such a controversial result. The action is part of a series titled Domestic Nationalism, in which Mate exposes how politics also emerges in the most intimate and private gestures, from the home to the public street.
The initiative aroused conflicting opinions and some disagreement among the residents of the area, although with the passage of time the work has become another part of the neighborhood’s landscape. Assimilated, yes, although not immune to changes. Because of the 25 signs with soldiers or politicians linked to the Dictatorship, 13 have been vandalized with paint or graffiti. In most of them the materials have clearly been used expressly to cover up the names, such as those on Avenida Comandante Franco or Pasaje del General Mola.
If we refine the magnifying glass it is possible to verify that action has been taken to different degrees and with different techniques depending on the plate. In that of General Varela, for example, the person who covered it with paint only covered the position of “General” and not the last name of the prime minister of the Army under Franco. Something similar, although actually also a little opposite, happens with Plaza Francisco Franco, where the crossing does not affect the word “square” but does affect the name and surname of the dictator. In Captain Blanco Argibay, the actor did not opt for white paint: the name is covered in several dark crossouts and there is a small graffiti in the upper right corner of the sheet. Similar gray blots cover the Plaza del Cuadillo insignia.
Regarding the left mural (due to the pedestrian’s location and ideological sensitivity), everything seems intact. The 21 plaques are intact and commemorate such outstanding personalities as Luis Bunuel, Rosa Chacel, Carmen Laforet, Rafael Alberti, Joan Maragall or Maria de la O Lejarrega, as well as the Institucion Libre de Ensenanza.
But in reality, there is an absence whose emptiness cries out: the republican teacher Justa Freire. His plaque was torn off a few months after the intervention was completed and was never replaced (Mate does not intervene in its creation once it was completed). As if the affronts of the real Madrid street map were transferred to the work, in which Justice forced the name of Millan Astray to be replaced by that of the teacher on a street in Latina, without the Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida City Council appealing the decision.
It is likely that these changes were on Mate’s mind when he created the work with the intention of questioning how citizens relate to their past and the figures from it that are still honored. Therefore, it is worth asking whether in such a lively and open work we can speak of vandalism or rather of collective participation. And if with this the artist suggests that acting on the “real” prints, especially those that pay tribute to anti-democratic figures, is not so much a legal manifestation.
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