El Muro del Mediterráneo en el siglo XX

Walter Benjamin said in 1939: “There is not a single document of culture that is not at the same time a document of barbarism” (Mate 2009: 130).Historically, the Mare Nostrum has been a sea of cultures, but also a fortified sea: the FortMed congresses are evidence of this. We are almost all familiar with the Atlantikwall, built by Germany between 1942 and 1944 from France to Norway: a unitary and systematic project whose decay inspired Paul Virilio's exhibition Bunker Archeology in 1975.However, other southern European countries had already begun to build their own walls, and others did so in parallel. We call the ‘Mediterranean Wall’ the set of defences that were built between the two great wars –and decades later– along these shores.This discontinuous wall is composed of a scattered system of almost prefabricated pieces that, mysteriously, conform to the tradition of military architecture that has otherwise always been at the forefront: technically precise, form and function intimately united, and economical like no other. These stubborn reinforced concrete ruins that stand the test of time are, perhaps, the first of modern architecture.