A group of second-year high school students from IES Teulada, made up of Lola Angelina Boyle, Daniela Montoya Toro and Martí Bertomeu Rodríguez, has been awarded second place number 1 in the 2023 Sapiència Awards. This recognition, granted in the Social Sciences category and Legal, was awarded for his project An uncomfortable story. Memory of the defeated (II). Places of memory and postmemory of the Valencian deportees from the Marina Alta to Mauthausen and Gusen. The delivery ceremony took place on November 11 in the Auditorium of the Jaume I University of Castellón.
The Sapiència Awards, an initiative of the Network of Valencian Universities for the promotion of R&D&i (RUVID) and the Department of Innovation, Universities, Science and Digital Society of the Generalitat Valenciana, recognize significant contributions in various academic fields.
The project, An uncomfortable story. Memory of the winners (2). Memory and postmemory records of the relatives of the Valencian deportees from the Marina Alta to Mathausen i Gusen, is a research carried out by Contemporary World History students under the tutorship of Manuel Luis Farpón Beltrán. It focuses on the memory and postmemory of relatives of Valencian deportees to the Mauthausen and Gusen concentration camps during the Second World War, exploring how this collective memory is preserved and its relevance in the context of human rights and democratic values.
The students, for their part, express their great satisfaction for having carried out this project. They feel proud not only of the recognition they have obtained, but also of having discovered their ability to make significant contributions. "We feel great for having been able to carry out this project and even more for having won, but above all because we have discovered that we are capable of doing something important," they commented. Their humble contribution, they claim, is an essential step to keep the memory of local history alive, demonstrating the power of youth in preserving and transmitting historical memory to new generations.
Manuel L. Farpón, head of the Department of Geography and History at IES Teulada and director of the project, highlights the importance of investigating the recent past from a local perspective, highlighting the challenge of understanding history and memory as different concepts, in line with the ideas of Walter Benjamin. The project is aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, especially SDG 4 (Quality Education) and SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions).
On December 18, 2023, at the V Youth Meeting for Memory organized by the Department of Geography and History of the IES Teulada, a trailer of a documentary about this project, made entirely by the center's students, will be presented. This event, which will take place at the Espacio la Senieta, is part of the activities of the Amical de Mauthausen Never Again Network and the Education and Memory Network (XEiM).
With this project, IES Teulada, despite being a center of modest size, is positioned among the six best in its category in the Valencian Country, exceeding expectations and marking an important milestone in education and historical memory.
