More than 80 years ago, artists, academics, supporters of the Republic, and others sought exile Spain’s Francoist regime. Now their stories are perishing. With each passing day, there are fewer remaining members of the exile community and the global pandemic has severely restricted travel to the cultural centers that maintain archived materials of their lives.

In this context, it was thus necessary to create a dedicated digital platform to preserve their stories. Exilio3639.org is a collaborative, public digital humanities project with the Ateneo español de México, members of the exiled community, and academics.

Using the open-source platform CGeomap, this transnational project crowdsources cultural ephemera, documents, and oral histories from the relatives of exiles, scholars, and the general public. The story map demonstrates the potential for individuals to narrate their own histories and to relate their experiences across both space and time. In addition, the project makes cultural objects and histories more engaging to a broad public audience.