The Dystopian Times, 7. Keeping the Memory.

Sometimes, the correction of history arrives too late. Other times, it arrives just before it's too late, and one wonders why it took so long. This coming Saturday, one of the Spanish vice presidents is going to Ay, in France, to give in hand a declaration of personal reparation to the last Spanish survivor of Mauthausen, Juan Romero, who is only 101. 

Shipped out to Mauthausen with the complicity of Franco, when the war was over, he couldn't return to his native Córdoba, and found a home in Ay, along with around twenty other Spanish survivors. With the change to a democratic state, however, Spain turned its back on those who landed in concentration camps in occupied Germany. The reason they ended up in France is that they couldn't come back, and any homage would have meant admitting that Franco's state would have had them killed. That jibed with the blanket forgiveness of Franco's regime adopted by the new, democratic government.

So, one by one, the survivors died with no recognition from their birth land, though their adopted country did honor them. Jean Romero was given the Légion d´Honneur some years ago. Saturday he will attend the ceremony along with his children and grandchildren, and descendants of his fellow Spaniards who settled in Ay along with him. It was about time. At least the Spanish government got around to honoring the last survivor of over 9,300 Spaniards sent to the camps.

Closer to home, down in Oia, Pontevedra province, lies a monastery. During the Civil War, it was used as a concentration camp. Conditions were horrible; cold, damp, and meals consisting of a few cooked chestnuts and water. Prisoners died of typhus and starvation. After the last prisoners were moved out, it was closed down again, only to be sold in 1945 for the equivalent of €350. Since then, it has passed from one hand to another. Right now, the owners want to try to make a hotel out of it. But, while they await the necessary permits, they are trying to fix and separate from the walls of one wing, the drawings and writings left there by some prisoners. 

This past July, they made an exposition with some of the rescued panels. It's a part of a guided tour of the monastery, in which its long, thousand year history is explained. There are many kinds of drawings, mostly about normal life, especially drawings of food. And there are the usual writings, with a name and a date. One such is "Aquí llegó el día 12-2-39 Eugenio Blanco," completed by a different hand: "y salió pal sementerio el día 16-4-39." (Here arrived on 12-2-39 Eugenio Blanco and left for the cemetery on 16-4-39.)

Slowly, our history is being remembered and passed on. Slowly. There are still many mass graves to open, and dead to be given back to their families. Unfortunately, memories are dying, as the oldest who remember die, and we have to look to what they left behind on walls like Oia's to understand what happened to them and others.

Life continues.