Modernist heritage and memory politics in Spain: shifting values for the adaptive reuse of Seville’s former police headquarters

Abstract

The political significance of modernist heritage architecture continues to be an unsolved question, particularly its identification and conservation. In Spain, the chronology of modernism stretches through the whole of the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship. The passing of legislation on memory politics in Spain (i.e. the 2007 Law of Historical Memory and the 2022 Law of Democratic Memory) offers a unique opportunity to address this unsolved question by discussing two uncharted heritage debates: namely, the motivations for the heritagisation of modernist architecture in Spain and the challenges in the adaptive reuse of modernist buildings with controversial histories. The former police headquarters in Seville exemplifies the complexities of both debates and to what extent conflicting views about heritage architecture may determine debates about its reuse. Through a documentary review of the heritagisation of Seville’s former police headquarters, a discourse analysis of intervention proposals and press articles and interviews with relevant stakeholders, this study explored how the rise of memory politics in Spain has changed the interpretation of the former police headquarters’ significance in the last two decades and influenced the choices for its adaptive reuse.