The Government of Spain has paid tribute today, in Germany, to the republican Spanish women who were deported to the Nazi concentration camp of Ravensbrück, in an event held at the Memorial del campo itself, and which has been presided over by the Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, accompanied by the Spanish Ambassador to Germany, Pascual Navarro, and the Secretary of State for Democratic Memory, Fernando Martínez.

Ravensbrück, located in the vicinity of the town of Fürstenberg, about 90 kilometers north of Berlin, was a field intended for women. It is estimated that more than 132,000 female prisoners passed through Ravensbrück, many of whom were accompanied by children and babies. Only 40,000 women survived.

During his speech, Minister Torres recalled the 120 Spanish women of Ravensbrück, who were arrested and imprisoned in France for activities of resistance against the Nazi occupation. “Some of them, after fighting in Spain defending the Second Republic, crossed the Pyrenees to continue facing fascism. This earned them the hallmark of political dams, a red triangle that condemned them to systematic exploitation as forced labor,” he said.

Torres has highlighted the terrible conditions suffered by these women and has claimed the need to “honor them, remember them and recover their memory”. The minister has insisted on the commitment of the Government of Spain to the victims. “Today is a historic day,” he said. “On April 30, it was 80 years since the liberation of this camp. What better time to recognize with a commemorative plaque the example of life of the 120 Spanish women who were imprisoned in this field.”

During his speech, the minister also stressed the “double victimization” of these prisoners, because they are women, since, for the Nazi machinery of extermination, they were, like boys and girls, “even more expendable than men.”

On the walls of the Ravensbrück camp, a plaque of the Government of Spain has been installed, commemorating and paying tribute to the Spanish women who suffered the hardships of that Nazi concentration and extermination camp.

Torres, who has been accompanied by the Secretary of State for Democratic Memory, Fernando Martínez; Pascual Navarro, Spain’s ambassador to Germany; Piedad Solans, representing Amical de Ravensbrück; and Concha Díaz, vice-president of Amical de Mauthausen, has stressed that the “duty”, but also the “vocation”, of the Spanish Government is “to recover the memory of the victims, and to honour the principles of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-repetition”.

After the visit to the Ravensbrück Memorial, Minister Ángel Víctor Torres presided over the inauguration, at the Spanish Embassy in Germany, of the exhibition ‘Spain in Freedom. 50 years’, which recognises the role of the many social groups and institutions that made the transition possible, underlining the importance of democracy, at a time when it is under threat in many parts of the world. He has also participated together with Martin Schulz, president of the Ebert Foundation, and several Hispanists who have pointed out the great advances of Spain over the last 50 years.