Ingenieros, nacionalismo y neoliberalismo: El MNACTEC y la cultura científica y técnica de la Transición en Cataluña (1975-1996)

This chapter analyses the history of the Museu Nacional de la Ciència i la Tècnica de Catalunya (MNACTEC) from its launch in 1976 by the Association of Industrial Engineers of Catalonia to the opening of its first permanent exhibition, “Energeia”, in 1996. Over the twenty years under analysis, the articulation between the changing political agenda of engineers, cultural policies of the Generalitat de Catalunya, the context of industrial reconversion and the deployment of neoliberalism marked the configuration of a non-conflictive view on national industrial heritage. The study of the various actors, objects, discourses and spaces that shaped the exhibition regimes of this “civic laboratory”, in terms of Tony Bennett, allows us to approach the co-construction of industrial heritage and national identity in Catalonia during the years of consolidation of the new political autonomic regime.