Virtual Spanish civil war museum aims to cut through political divide

Online history centre launches against backdrop of renewed debate over the conflict's legacy

In the middle of September, three weeks before Spain's senate approved a landmark law to honour the victims of the Spanish civil war and the subsequent Franco dictatorship, a new museum quietly threw open its digital doors.

The Virtual Museum of the Spanish Civil War, an online history centre that has been almost a decade in the making, may chronicle and examine a conflict that ended 83 years ago but its aims could not be more timely.