2023-05-03 14:52:35
“Today is a day of remembrance, of homage to the thousands of Spaniards who were victims of Nazism whose memory is, in its own right, an essential part of our democratic history.” With these words, Raquel Sánchez, the Minister of Transport, Mobility and the Urban Agenda, began her speech this Wednesday in an act of homage in memory of the victims of the Holocaust in Madrid, which was also attended by the Minister of the Presidency, Relations with the Courts and Democratic Memory, Félix Bolaños.
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The minister has issued a warning message in a context where the extreme right in Spain and in Europe continues to rise: “The enemies of democracy have not disappeared, they are still among us.” And she has continued to refer to those “enemies of democracy.” “It bothers them that we remember, that we pay tribute to the Republicans […]They are annoyed by the commemorative plaques and the small monuments that attest to their sacrifice, it bothers them that after so many decades of silence we are raising our voices”, he lamented.
Sánchez has recalled the legacy of the men and women who refused to accept “tyranny” and has defended that their voices that have been silenced for so long are those of “democracy and freedom”. In addition, she has thanked all those countries that offered asylum to the Spanish during the Nazi era, as well as all the associations that have maintained the memory of these victims over the years. “We have an immense debt”, the minister has defended before members and officials of the Amical de Mauthausen and other camps and of all the victims of Nazism in Spain, an association founded in 1962 in charge of preserving the historical memory of the republicans deported to the Nazi concentration camps.
After the minister, the vice president of this organization, Concha Díaz, has once again remembered all the Spanish victims of Nazism and has thanked the decisions of the political leaders of the governments of Spain from 2018 until now: “They have responded to the long-awaited demands of our association.” The vice president of Amical has focused on her speech in the European political context and on the rise of fascist forces in countries like Italy, Hungary, Poland or Finland. “They do not sink their roots in the anti-fascist consensus and claim some features of fascism in the postmodern class,” she pointed out. “Exclusionary nationalism, assertion of authority, traditionalism and a militarism now exacerbated by the war in Ukraine”, she has continued.
For his part, Bolaños – who has avoided mentioning the controversy over the veto imposed on him by the president of the Community of Madrid in the acts of Dos de Mayo – has defended the new Democratic Memory Law woven from his own department and definitively approved on October 5, whose first preamble “talks about the Holocaust as the starting point for all memory policies worldwide.”
Likewise, he has pointed out the importance of symbolic acts, such as the one that took place today or the one that was held last week in Gernika, recalling the first bombing of the civilian population by Nazi and fascist aircraft. “It is a moral duty that advanced societies have to neutralize forgetfulness”, he has said, about symbolic acts. The minister ended by thanking the many entities that collaborate with the Government to carry out the work of democratic memory: “It is a civic responsibility to maintain the memory of these people.”
The tribute ended with the delivery of a flower crown to the vice-president of the Amical and with live music.
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