Pro-Spanish and Nazis

It was at the end of the nineties, when I was working in Madrid, that a name of a street caught my attention: The fallen ones of the Blue Division Street. It was not an old street sign someone had forgotten to update. However, that name seemed to surprise nobody but me. Afterwards I managed to check out that, then and still now, there are up to eight streets and one avenue dedicated to the fallen, as well as the surviving members of the military unit that fought in Russia under the command of Germany. Franco sent over 50,000 troops to besiege Leningrad. They fought for the Nazi army under the official name of 250 Einheit spanischer Freiwilliger. Some of them fiercely defended the bunker of the Chancellery until Adolf Hitler committed suicide.

All this collaboration between the Spanish regime and the nationalists turned the Caudillo's country into the most important shelter for Nazi war criminals which were under arrest warrant by the international courts. The majority of these criminals died with an enviably advanced age. Indeed, it could be possible that one of them would still be in the coast of Andalusia walking around as happily as Francoist leaders and followers used to do. One of this shared agents, Pedro Urraca, worked for the Gestapo. and it was him who arrested and deported Catalan president Companys in the occupied France.

In short, Spanish nationalism is the only political movement—whatever its initials happen to be—that has never condemned Nazism. Nowhere else in the world can you find monuments or plaques paying tribute to soldiers from Adolf Hitler’s regime, as you can in Spain. Maybe we should think of this every time that a Spanish nationalist shamelessly qualifies Catalans as Nazis for wanting to be free.

Salvador Cot (Nació Digital)