Renovation of the signalling of the Network of Democratic Memory Sites in Girona

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

The action carried by the City Hall of Girona and the Democratic Memorial, with the coordination of the History Museum of Girona, consisted in the remodelling of the graphic elements of the sites of remembrance of the city, located at the Old Cemetery, the air-raid shelter at Jardí de la Infància and the old prison of the Seminary.

On September, 30th, 2024, following the law 20/2022 of Democratic Memory, several Francoist symbols still preserved at the Old Cemetery of Girona were removed. They were five plaques and a cross with inscriptions of glorification of the dictatorship. Once removed, these elements were stored at the warehouses of the History Museum of Girona.

The Museum is the responsible for preserving the objects related to the Memory and History of the city and for promoting this knowledge of the recent past through several museological narratives, both inside the very Museum or outdoors, at the streets and urban spaces of Girona.

Today, February, 5th, 2025, coinciding with the commemoration of the 86 years since the entrance of the fascist troops in Girona (occurred on February, 4th, 1939), Democratic Memory signalling has been installed and updated at the cemetery. These elements remember that, as a consequence of the entrance of the troops and of the Francoist repression, the cemetery of Girona became the place where the dictatorship, between 1939 and 1945, executed 510 people.

The first City Hall since the democratic recovery ordered to rearrange the cemetery in 1981. In 2010 the City Hall of Girona and the Democratic Memorial, based on the research done by the Municipal Archive, carried out the dignifying of the mass grave as a place of remembrance, by building a wall to pay homage to the people killed, which displays their names, the date of their execution and their last place of residence, now renovated with this last action.

Moreover, as a consequence of the fascist violence around Europe, during the years of World War II, more than 250 people from the area of Girona were deported to Nazi camps. Some of these people also have remembrance sites in the city: the Stolperstein plaques, placed in 2018 near the air-raid shelter at Jardí de la Infància, thanks to the collaboration of Democratic Memorial with the History Museum of Girona and the City Hall, and a site at the cemetery erected in 1980, at the other side of the wall that remembers the victims of Francoism.

On February, 5th, 2025, powered by the City Hall of Girona and the Democratic Memorial, and in coordination with the History Museum, these sites at the cemetery of Girona have been highlighted with the promotion of new signalling and the renovation of those already existing remembrance elements.