Fernando Martínez, Secretary of State for Democratic Memory, participated in the unveiling of the plaque of Place of Democratic Memory next to the tomb of the poet Antonio Machado, who died in Colliure on February 22, 1939, just a few days after having to be forced into exile with his mother and one of his brothers. He was accompanied by Carmina Gustrán, commissioner for the celebration of 'Spain in Freedom. 50 years’, the consul of Spain in Perpignan, Marcelino Cabanas, and the mayor of Collioure, Guy Llobet.

The Secretary of State pointed out that “in everyone’s memory was Federico García Lorca and his terrible end, or the imprisonment of Miguel Hernández, but the exile was also a great wound in Spanish society and an irreparable loss of talent. There were thousands of teachers, intellectuals, architects, mechanics, artists, nurses or poets who, like Antonio Machado, had to leave their land in order to save their lives.”