for the Spain they believed to be better: in Girona

Memorial to the Mauthausen victims in Girona cemetery The Memorial to the Mauthausen victims from Girona was inaugurated on 11th May 1979. It is placed opposite to the one dedicated to the victims of Franco dictatorship in the Girona cemetery. It consists of a vertical stone monolith containing this carved message: “Als gironins morts al camp d’extermini nazi de Mauthausen” According to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum “after the Nazi regime initiated World War II, the number of prisoners arriving in Mauthausen increased dramatically and broadened in diversity. After the fall of France in June 1940, Vichy French authorities turned over to the German SS and police thousands of Spanish refugees, virtually all of whom had fought against General Francisco Franco's rebel troops during the Spanish Civil War, , and who had fled to France after Franco overthrew the Spanish Republic in 1939. The SS and police incarcerated the overwhelming majority of the Spanish republicans, more than 7,000, in Mauthausen in 1940 and 1941; individual members of the anti-Franco forces continued to trickle in to the camp until the last weeks of the war. Also incarcerated at Mauthausen were members of the International Brigades, most of them communists of various nationalities, who had fought the Franco forces in Spain.” According to the BOE (Boletín General del Estado / 9th August 2019) 4.427 Spanish victims died at Mauthausen-Gussen concentration camp. 1094 were Catalan and of these 124 were from the counties of Girona. These photos were taken in March 2020.