Argentina’s President, Cristina Fernandez, was on hand at the opening of the US$20m (€15.2m £12.7m) Malvinas Museum – something she called a “living commitment to end the last vestiges of colonialism.”

The museum, which recalls the Falkland Islands' (also known as Islas Malvinas) history since 1520, is located at an ex-secret detention centre in Núñez, Buenos Aires, where thousands were illegally held prisoner and tortured during Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship.

The Falkland Islands is a homogeneous society, with the majority of its inhabitants descended from Scottish and Welsh immigrants who settled at the territory in 1833, though Argentina still claims the UK has illegally occupied the islands since then.

The attraction opens up into a 360-degree chamber, which includes a window frame, half the building’s size, to represent the ARA Belgrano battleship torpedoed and sunk by a UK submarine in the South Atlantic.

For children, a special guide takes them through the museum with games on tablets teaching about the islands’ flora and fauna.

A media archive provides music and videos on the Falklands and other South Atlantic islands, as well as their geopolitical significance. Other exhibits include an area dedicated to the Rattenbach report on the reasons for the Argentine military failure during the 1982 conflict and letters written by school children to the conscripts. Various memorial tributes to the Argentine soldiers who died during the Falklands War are also on display.

“It's not about war,” said the President. “But it will take you through the life and history of the Malvinas which we demand UK returns to Argentina. (It is) interactive and in each of its four chapters you will appreciate sensorial experiences, the wind, the sea, the noise of military jets while at the same time honouring our heroes, brave from 1829, 1982 to the present day.”

President: Argentina to build Falklands museum