Dans le monde de ce qui est vu

To remember architecture in Algeria is to realise that it is impossible to identify its origins. In this connection, I remember a man talking to me in the 1980s and saying: "You know, after independence, one of our ideas was to import the Andalusian tradition and make it our history. I don't know whether the words of this man, who claimed to be a former official in Houari Boumédiène's time, were true, but the anecdote is worth quoting in that it illustrates the overall feeling of a people whose amnesia was orchestrated for more than a century.

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