In the mid‐1970s, the fascist‐leaning dictatorships in Spain (1939–1977) and Portugal (1933–1974) fell. Closely linked to the 1973 oil crisis, debates over energy and technology policies became very prominent during the ensuing political redefinition of both countries. Two decades after the first international agreements between the Iberian regimes and the United States for the development of nuclear programs, a myriad of movements of social resistance to nuclear technology emerged in dialogue with anti‐nuclear organizations in other European countries. Fun and playfulness have been used for top–down popularization and banalization of nuclear technologies since the 1950s, but here pleasant forms of resistance also played a central role in contesting national energy plans, expert discourses, and vested interests. This article explores what we call “anti‐nuclear fun,” the use of amusement, play, and humor as political and epistemic tools to familiarize society with the exceptional and daily risks of the “peaceful atom.”

How do nuclear technologies become commonplace? How have the borders between the exceptional and the banal been drawn and redrawn over the last 70 years in order to make nuclear energy part of everyday life? This special issue analyzes the role of fun and display, broadly construed, in shaping the cultural representation and the material circulation (or non‐circulation) of nuclear technologies. Four case studies, covering the United States, Great Britain, Portugal, Spain, and Ukraine from the 1950s to the 2000s, explore how specific forms of public display and playful practices of cultural production were used as means to banalize (or de‐banalize) nuclear energy. This introduction addresses the main theoretical and historiographical signposts of the special issue and outlines the different ways in which the articles explore them.

The latest in the Artefacts series, Behind the Exhibit examines scientific heritage and narratives behind public display of scientific artifacts in national and international exhibitions and science museums throughout the twentieth century. Developed from the Artefacts XX conference, convened 20–22 September 2015 at the Leonardo da Vinci National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan, during Expo Milan 2015, this volume brings together museum curators and historians of science and technology to present case studies from the United States, Europe, Russia, and Japan. What emerged is a study of the tension between basic science and technological applications, the multilayered role of history, the appearance and disappearance of artifacts, and the search for a balance between entertainment and education.

In March 1937, the Technology Museum of Catalonia was created by a governmental order, but it never materialized. How come was a national museum of technology perceived as an urgent need in the midst of the Spanish Civil War? This article explores how this failed attempt was rooted in the long-standing political interest of the engineering community in the musealization of technology in Barcelona. On the one hand, it analyses the tradition of technological display aimed at increasing industrial productivity and improving technical education. On the other hand, it studies the techno-nationalist efforts by engineers to construct a respectable technological past for the nation through display. Finally, it explores how these two approaches would have been articulated in the Technology Museum of Catalonia in the context of the key role played by engineering professionals during the Spanish Civil War.

En este artículo se argumenta que los recientes movimientos sociales no se pueden entender exclusivamente como movimientos de “última generación” con su multiplicidad de heterodoxas formas digitales. Sin negar el impacto social, emocional y político de las nuevas tecnologías de la información y de la comunicación, es necesario entender hasta qué punto estos movimientos están enraizados en —y son contestados por— materialidades, artefactos y redes con un largo recorrido histórico. A partir de cuatro secciones, a la manera de “desplazamientos”, se profundiza sobre la permeabilidad entre lo digital y lo material, por un lado, y entre lo civil y lo militar, por el otro. Tomando en cuenta inspiradoras aproximaciones de la historia y la sociología de la tecnología, pretendemos contribuir con algunas “reflexiones de emergencia” para pensar las complejas relaciones entre tecnología, política y violencia en las últimas protestas en las calles de Colombia.

In 1975, the death of dictator Francisco Franco opened the door to a turbulent period known as the "Spanish Transition." In the wake of the 1973 oil crisis, national politics, political violence and social demands were interwoven with international shifts in science and technology and global debates on "energy transitions." In close dialogue with foreign environmental groups, the anti-nuclear movement in Spain deployed a large repertoire of collective action; it ranged from pleasant activities to violent direct actions against nuclear technologies, but also included the making of technological alternatives. Counter-culture activists and counter-experts opposed nuclear energy and promoted renewable energy as two sides of the same coin.This paper explores the pioneering (and networked) initiatives of an anarchist-oriented group called Self-Managed Radical Alternative Technologies, created in 1976, and a group of young engineers who founded the cooperative Ecotècnia, which was behind the construction of the first commercial wind turbine in Catalonia in 1984. The paper focuses on the transnational circulation of grassroots knowledge, the epistemics of resistance, and the development of wind energy technologies as "technologies of protest." Technologies of protest illuminate how the social construction of technology is intertwined with what I call the "social destruction of technology." Keywords (4-6):renewable energy transitions, alternative technology, anti-nuclear movement, counter-culture, social destruction of technology Gegen Kernkraftwerke kämpfen. Windenergie, Basisbewegung und Technologien des Protests in Spanien, 1976Spanien, -1984

Este artículo analiza el papel político de la ingeniería industrial catalana en el contexto de la crisis económica de 1929 y la Segunda República Española. Los profesionales agrupados en torno de la Asociación de Ingenieros Industriales de Barcelona pensaron la autonomía catalana como una oportunidad clave para construir un proyecto nacional en el que las decisiones políticas fueran tuteladas por la eficacia y la competencia técnica. El amplio abanico de ideologías políticas de estos profesionales se desplegó antes de la Guerra Civil junto con el discurso de apoliticismo de las ciencias aplicadas.

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