This initiative will include, for the first time, the municipalities of L'Escala, with 10 stumbling blocks, Palamós, with 8, and Tortosa, with 6. The announcement was made by the Minister of the Presidency from the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, emphasizing Catalonia's commitment to democratic memory.
“"Catalonia is a pioneer and a benchmark in democratic memory, and we must strive to make a greater effort in remembrance at a time when fascism is spreading across Europe."
The 'stolpersteine' are small metal plaques embedded in the ground, usually in front of the last freely chosen residence of victims of Nazism, such as Jews, Roma, political opponents, or LGTBI individuals. Each block is engraved with the victim's name, date of birth, destination, and, if known, the date of deportation or death.
This project, conceived by the German artist Gunter Demnig in 1996, aims for passersby to "symbolically stumble" upon the memory of these individuals, integrating remembrance into daily life and preventing it from being exclusively confined to museums or monuments. Currently, there are over 117,500 'stolpersteine' distributed in 31 European countries, solidifying their role as a "gesture of humanity that contrasts with the dehumanization" of the Nazi regime.
