This cycle was devoted to the question of identity. Specifically, the construction of identity through absence and, in particular, the construction of Catalan identity through the absence of the “absent” experience of the Muslim and Jewish communities that lived together in the lands of the Crown of Aragon until the end of the Middle Ages.

Indeed, all identity is made over time by continuous reference to “others”. To be someone is not to be someone else. This otherness is often a presence (our recently arrived neighbour, our marginalised neighbour, etc.). But sometimes it is also an absence, an absence that is past but at the same time reverberating, expelled but at the same time admired. In the history of the Catalan Countries, the Jews and the Moors have often played this role of the absent other.

See the announcement of the cycle in the press.

The conferences of the cycle were the following:

• La construcció d’una identitat nacional a Catalunya, by Jordi Casassas (see press release)
• L’alteritat femenina des de la immigració, by Míriam Díez Bosch (see the press release)
• Les identitats culturals i religioses a la Corona catalanoaragonesa, segles XII a XV, by Dolors Bramon (see the press release)
• Què vol dir «ser d’aquí», «ser d’un lloc»? L’espai comú, by Xavier Antich (see the press release)
• La nació abans de la nació i els «altres» (moros, jueus i esclaus), by Ferran Garcia-Oliver (see the press release) 
• La identitat jueva al segle XXI: més enllà de la qüestió religiosa, by Fania Oz-Salzberger (see the interviews published in El Punt Avui and Catalonia Today)

Here you can download the complete programme of the conferences.