Leader of ARENAS Work Package 2, Ana Yara Postigo Fuentes of the Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf, recently organised an International Workshop in Bonn. The Workshop Title was ‘Extremist Narratives: Linguistic and Historical Analysis (Focusing on the Spanish and Catalan Case)’. Funding was received from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)
Members of the ARENAS team from Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) delivered presentations at the opening session. For ARENAS, UAB leads Work Package 3, The Circulation of Extremist Narratives. The overall theme they addressed was ‘From Franco to Sánchez: A Brief History of Democratic Spain’. However, each speaker addressed a particular topic within that theme.
The first to speak was Miguel Ángel Del Río Morillas, his paper was on ‘From Franco to Aznar: the transition to democracy and the years of Felipe González (1975-1995)”. Next was Steven Forti who spoke on ‘From Aznar to Sánchez: between the two-party system and the crisis of the “regime of 1978” (1996-2024)’. Last to speak in this session was Sergi Soler López, his topic was ‘Catalonia in the 21st century: between autonomism and independentism’.
The Workshop was organised specifically to engage students of BA and MA of the Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf and they were able to attend in person or online. Also in attendance were Rolf Kailuweit, as part of the organising team from the HHU and Oriol Bartomeus Bayés from ICPS, both members of the ARENAS team.
Speaking after the workshop Ana Yara Postigo Fuentes said, ‘This workshop is particularly important to approach extremist narratives in the Spanish and Catalan context in an interdisciplinary way. Looking at the same topic from the windows of different disciplines has led the students to have a more complete and richer vision, and the speakers to continue scientific discussions of the topic at hand.’
