Freedom Routes Inaugurated in Alt Empordà to Commemorate Exile

The project recovers and marks the border crossings used during World War II to escape Nazism and fascism in the region.

Signage for a historical route in a Mediterranean landscape.
IA

Signage for a historical route in a Mediterranean landscape.

The Reeixida Foundation, several town councils, and the Democratic Memorial have inaugurated the first signs of the freedom routes in Colera, Molinàs, and Llançà, in Alt Empordà, to commemorate the border crossings of World War II.

This weekend saw the launch of the first signs for a project aimed at recovering and making visible the memory of the paths used to escape Nazism and fascism during World War II. The initiative, promoted by the Reeixida Foundation, the town councils of Colera and Llançà, the Democratic Memorial, and the Exile Memorial Museum, has begun in Colera, Molinàs, and Llançà.
The first inauguration took place on Saturday in front of Colera Town Hall, with an attendance of about eighty people. During the event, various representatives highlighted the importance of institutional collaboration to continue marking these memory spaces. It was emphasized that these first plaques are just the beginning of a broader project.
Subsequently, the delegation moved to Molinàs, where the second signage was inaugurated. At this point, the figure of one of the first resistance fighters was remembered, who, in July 1939, entered occupied Catalonia to establish the first organized resistance nucleus, being responsible for providing false documentation to those using these paths.
The events continued on Sunday in Llançà's Plaça de la Vela, where the first plaque of the freedom route in the municipality was unveiled. The connection of a renowned poet with this area was highlighted, who wrote several articles for the spokesperson of the National Front of Catalonia, Per Catalunya!, and later lived between Barcelona and Llançà's Grifeu beach.

"Llançà can become the ground zero of this project, just as Portbou is in the dissemination of Walter Benjamin's figure."

the president of the Reeixida Foundation
During the event in Llançà, the Reeixida Foundation urged the Town Council to continue installing plaques for the freedom routes and to promote conferences on exile, defending Llançà's potential as a central point for this initiative.