Samantha Mythen
THE SPANISH king and queen attended the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp on Sunday.
King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia, for the first time, led a procession to pay tribute to the estimated 5000 Spanish Republicans who perished at the camp during World War Two.
Thousands of Spanish Republicans who fought against General Franco during the Spanish Civil War had fled to France afterwards. When France fell to the Nazis in 1940, the Republicans, considered enemies of the Reich, were rounded up and more than 7000 were sent to Mauthausen between 1940 and 1941.
In the camp guestbook, the King and Queen wrote that they ‘reaffirm their collective and personal commitment to democracy and the defence of human rights.’
“May the memory of the crimes committed here and the memory of our compatriots remain intact to preserve their dignity. And may we never forget the horror,” they wrote.
Known as the ‘camp that swallowed the most Spanish Republicans,’ historian Montserrat Roig said more than 190,000 deportees passed through the camp, with 90,000 dying from disease, torture, exhaustion and gassing.
During the memorial, Queen Letizia held a handkerchief embroidered with the ‘S’ for Spanish inside a blue triangle representing the ‘Red Spaniards,’ the name given to Spanish Republicans by the Nazis. Together with King Felipe VI, they laid a wreath at several memorial cenotaphs.
“It’s an image that is also uncomfortable for relatives of those who were persecuted or abandoned to their fate by Franco’s Spain,” said El País journalist Marc Bassets.
“Uncomfortable for those who keep the flame of the Republic alive and who, in some cases, said this Sunday that the monarchy’s gesture was too late.”
Bassets said the Republicans who were detained in Mauthausen and other concentration camps in Austria remain central to the Spanish identity and cultural values today.
During the memorial, the King and Queen spoke with Juan Manuel Calvo, president of the Amical de Mauthasuen association.
“It was important for us that, for the first time, the head of state visit Mauthausen. He has shown us that he knows exactly what the deportation of the Republicans meant,” Calvo said to El País.
Calvo expressed he still hopes to one day witness an official apology from the Spanish state for its complicit role in the actions of the Francoist Government, the Pétain Government from France who collaborated with the Nazis, and the Nazi regime.
King Felipe VI had never personally attended Mauthausen before Sunday’s memorial anniversary, although he has paid numerous tributes to Republican Spain since becoming King in 2014.
The last Spanish Republicans who survived the Nazi death camps died five years ago.
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