THE MAGIC LABYRINTH

The Magic Labyrinth is a project by Julian Barón about historical reenactions of Spanish Civil War episodes that take place in Lopera, Fayón, Morata de Tajuña or Viver. These representations are conceived as theatrical actions, halfway between the playful and the cultural, with the purpose of bringing the battles that took place from 1936 to 1939 closer to those generations that have not known the war. In these, reenactors and general public blend together to condense an imaginary that comes from cinema and photographs made by correspondents of what it was considered the first media war. Julian photographs these events to engineer a bombardment of images delivered in this book: a visual labyrinth, a time warp in which images of a painful past merge with the most superficial symbols of our contemporary culture. A situation that Max Aub communicate through one the characters of The Magic Labyrinth, the novelistic series about the Spanish war from which this project takes its title: “Spain will never leave the labyrinth because Spain is the labyrinth”.