In 1912 the 'Reapers of Poland' a provocative theatre play set during the peasant rebellion in 1794 was performed for the first time for the audiences in Barcelona. A few year later, the street of Poland was inaugurated in the same city.
These two examples of early twentieth century memory culture are part of a trend of transnational travelling memories (Erll 2011) at the time which were used and adopted for specific purposes by different groups.
This paper analyses the street-naming reforms and nationalist theatre performances in Barcelona between 1880 and 1935 by examining the transnational connections, convergences of memories and nationalist policies. How did shared commemoration and acts of remembrance contribute to 'imagined communities' and a sense of belonging across borders? What role did Poland and Polish memories play in the Catalan nationalist imagination?
Historiography on toponomy, memory and nationalism has argued that national states tend to commemorate only figures and events within a concrete geographic realm. Generally, they either stay within national borders or commemorate a lost or disputed territory. Commemorations of international figures, events or places are usually only associated with Communist regimes (Chloupek 2019). The changes of street names in Barcelona at the beginning of the twentieth century as well as the theatre plays of the nationalist circles, however, show how Catalan memory practices followed not only a 'national' principle but also an inter-national paradigm of technology-infused universalism and ideas of an alliance and solidarity between people. The paper demonstrates how international memories influenced how Catalans imagined the city of Barcelona, Spain and wider Europe.
