Spanish ministers visit concentration camp

Three Spanish Government Ministers, Pablo Bustinduy, Fernando Martínez and Ángel Víctor Torres travelled to the former Nazi concentration camp of Mauthausen, in Austria.

Spain pays tribute

Their purpose on May 5 and 6 was to pay tribute to the 9,300 Spaniards who were consigned to various camps, although the largest number, almost 7,000 ended up in Mauthausen which was liberated in May 1945.

Pablo Bustinduy said “I come to pay tribute to those murdered here and those who suffered the atrocity of these camps. Many of them were Spanish republicans who ended up in French camps after going into exile.

“They fought against Franco and Hitler, and were forgotten by our country and by the European democracies when they did not come to rescue Spain from Franco’s dictatorship.”

Sympathy for Jewish and Gypsy victims

He also took the time to remember the Jewish and Gypsy victims who were exterminated in the camp and said that it should never happen again whilst also taking the opportunity to publicly criticise certain policies being promulgated by Spanish Parliamentary opposition Partido Popular and Vox.

In addition to the laying of a wreath, an exhibition organized by the Ministry of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory and the Sefarad-Israel Center has been inaugurated in pavilion number 11, with the aim of reflecting on the memory of the Jewish deportees and the Spanish republicans who were interned in the camp between 1940 and 1945.