Exhibition EUCEMET European cemeteries: Garden of souls, diversity and heritage.

The City Council of Avilés has led the project EUCEMET co-financed by the culture program 2077 - 2013 of the European Commission, which has been involved in cooperation with the Association of municipalities of Nebbiu (North of Corsica), the Town Hall of Nicosia (Cyprus) and the Association of European significant cemeteries. As a result of the implementation of this program has consolidated the exhibition European cemeteries: Garden of souls, diversity and heritage.

Initially exposed in the cemetery Dobrava in Maribor (Slovenia), the City Council of Avilés sought for if this important photographic exhibition which was housed in the building of the old fishmonger of Avilés where, accompanied by an ambitious programming composed by various acts and cultural events, reached great importance, causing a significant impact in the population.

Subsequently the City Council of Lugo interested in giving continuity to the project, requested the City Council of Avilés, the temporary transfer of the exhibition, promoting for this purpose a collaboration agreementbetween two Councils, through which are fixed the precise conditions that enable its new and current location in the Interactive history Museum of Lugo (MIHL), recently inaugurated in the city where it will remain until the end of April.

The Creative Assembly and thematic interpretation and the incorporation of new elements have contributed to enrich the already initially magnificent exhibition, giving a new approach that marks a touch of peculiarity which has come to enhance the final result, being also relevant its success between the population and the incidence in the internetnews.

In this way, the different styles and peculiar connotations that have been given to the photographic exhibition in their different situations, have left patent the patrimonial relevance, the uniqueness and historical richness of cemeteries that are part of the historical route of European cemeteries, contributing to the diffusion of the Association of European significant cemeteries and the consolidation of its objectives.

At this time, with the closing of the exhibition at the end of April in the City Council of Lugo and considering the profitability of the fruits obtained in this short tour, being taken steps so that the project continue and exposure consolidate their itinerant character by different municipalities, at the State level and at European level.

To this end, the City Council of Avilés is working on the elaboration of a framework agreement through which is to achieve the necessary synergy between different local entities that participate, make possible the diffusion of the project through the creation of a route of exposure and at the same time ensuring the gradual addition of new elements and diversity of approaches of the participating entities, which will contribute to its enrichment and, finally, to the achievement of the objectives which constitute the cornerstones of the Association: the preservation of cemeteries and their integration in the cities as a fundamental part of its historical memory and the social relations of its members.

The cemetery as emotional refuge

In today's society the concept of death is totally rootless, is a taboo subject and that on many occasions it has been trivialized and subverted by the exaltation of his most morbid and most striking aspects and, therefore, also more exploitable commercially, all in an attempt to hide or blur your presence, or simply ignore with the deafening mood to flee from his cloak, to flee from the fear which causes the mere finding of its existence, as if thus we could avoid it or what it is to prevent the flow of life itself that leads us inexorably toward her.

This has contributed to prostitute the concept of death, leaving aside its substantial meaning, its essence, subtracting value possible teaching we could get from the experience of overcoming, overcome or simply accept the inevitable of its final position in the life cycle and learn to live with the fear that makes us.
The fact the acceptance of death as inevitable, and assertively address as part of the life cycle, always provide us a different perspective on life: the awareness of the need to live, to live intensely each moment presented to us, flowing into the river of life without anchors that imprison us in the pastwithout the exacerbated hunger that takes us to the future, stopping us in the present and preventing us from living, enjoy and even be.

How much greater is the learning and knowledge about ourselves, and the more and better let us live in harmony with the existence of death, easier take the final step and, even, to accept and overcome the absence - after the inevitable pain, the inevitable duel - of our loved persons. Because in the same way that we accept own death will accept others.

In this context, the cemeteries acquire a leading role in the evolution of life and the death of all societies. They converge in all prospects, considerations, concepts, ideologies and viewpoints that revolve around death, reflecting not only the division of social classes, the social structure, but also the relationship with death, fear, pain, separation, hope or life.

This makes the cemeteries, repositories of funerary, and historical-artistic and cultural heritage in authentic places of emotional refuge where we are confident that our emotions, which are deposit and keep emotions poured into every bounce, every duel, in the consolation, in hope, in each encounter, in memories, in the historical memory.

Is in the cemetery where, with calm and peace that characterizes them, it offers us the opportunity of learning how to live, where with each bounce, we can begin a new cycle, a new phase that breaks with the previous incorporating its teachings, a new form of live, a newpoint of view of life, and learn to flow with it.

We can talk then of the cemetery as a portal of emotional healing that have place each and every one of the emotions or feelings there deposited, through which we can connect with them in harmony and promote the assertiveness necessary to achieve emotional alchemy that transforms pain to pain loss in comfort, the restlessness in hope, anxiety for the loss in acceptance, the absence of vital energy in the strength to return to the cycle of life. Perhaps we will thus achieve convert sadness by the loss in joy, in the joy of having been able to enjoy and share that life went. Perhaps we will thus achieve convert sadness by the loss in joy, in the joy of having been able to enjoy and share that life went.

It is a perspective that we cannot ignore the cemeteries and understood as a reason for their integration in social life of towns and cities.

It is essential that such venues favor this special approach, fostering an environment of calm that call inside peace and meditation.We fill the cemeteries of poems, phrases of hope, flowers, vegetation...

At the same time, in addition to the cultural movement already created in those who are more advanced in this line, promote the lectures, conferences, workshops of mourning, social movements of help and solidarity for these difficult moments that all the people have experienced, with more cruelty than others and in which the shoulder of a friendis always necessary in order to survive emotionally.

Amparo Rubinos Hermida
Head of section
Municipal cemetery San Froilan
Concello de Lugo

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