IES Ciudad de Jaén - Madrid · Itinerario muralístico de Vitoria-Gasteiz

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IES Ciudad de Jaén · Madrid

Facts

Description

Following the success of the IMVG's work in Vitoria-Gasteiz, we were invited to develop a similar experience at a school in Madrid. The project was carried out at the initiative of the U.S. Embassy in Spain, to mark the 500th anniversary of Ponce de León's arrival in Florida, and was held as part of Volunteer Day on 7 June 2013.
The mural was painted over four days, with the help of Embassy volunteers, students from several schools in the neighbourhood (including IES Ciudad de Jaén itself), and mothers from the school's parents' association.
Alongside the map of the United States, the following elements appear:

• A mission, in reference to the Spanish colonisation of California.
• A Basque shepherd, representing the many young Basques who emigrated to Nevada around 1850 (the most significant wave of Spanish emigration to the United States).
• A horse, an animal once extinct in America and returned to the continent by the Spanish conquistadors, later becoming a true American icon among Native peoples and cowboys.
• A turbine, symbol of the current momentum of Spanish technology in the United States.

Alongside the map of Spain, the following elements appear:

• A basketball player, in reference to the prestige of Spanish athletes in the United States and to the growing popularity of basketball in Spain.
• The emblem of NASA's Apollo mission, in recognition of Spanish participation — companies and scientists — in space exploration, especially in the Apollo missions of the 1960s.
• The Guggenheim Bilbao, designed by an American architect and connected to a great museum in New York.
• The figure of Ernest Hemingway, framed within the arches of a bullring, as a symbol of the cultural attraction Spain has exercised over North American artists and writers.

Finally, the maps of both countries are a reference to bilingualism: IES Ciudad de Jaén is a bilingual school.
 

Participants: