Navigation Path

  • Project Details
  • Coordinating Organisation
  • Partner Organisation(s)
  • Project map
Programme: Europe for Citizens
Identifier: 618437-CITIZ-1-2020-1-ES-CITIZ-REMEM
Title: Leçons pour le présent: "Rotspanier", travailleus forcés espagnols à la Seconde Guerre mondiale. La (des)memoire européenne de l´antifascisme.
Summary
With the aim of promoting the achievements of the EU, fighting totalitarianism and safeguarding peace, and considering ideological freedom to be a fundamental value of the EU, we want to reweave the memory of a group of people persecuted for ideological reasons, and forgotten by European memory: the "Rotspaniers" or "Spanish Reds", exiled to escape a dictatorship and persecuted by Nazism for being "potentially dangerous". During the Second World War, millions of Europeans were forced to work for Nazi Germany. Some 50,000 were "Rotspaniers" exiled in France after 1939. From Norway to the Bay of Biscay, there were Spanish slaves to the Third Reich and its satellite regimes. They lived mainly in fields guarded by the SS or the Todt Organisation and worked in factories or in the construction of strategic infrastructures such as bunkers and submarine bases. In the 1960s, they claimed compensation from the FRG as victims of Nazism. The courts ruled in their favour, and the Spanish exiles thus became the only forced labourers from the Third Reich to be recognised by the FRG as victims of Nazism for political reasons. The project aims to disseminate these life stories and raise awareness of the consequences of ideological unfreedom for totalitarian regimes. The main approach of the project has been based on building and weaving a connection of complicity between the academic world, civil society, Spanish and French historical memory associations, institutions, teachers and students of secondary schools, who have to be trainers and receivers of a past that cannot and must not be repeated. These students must assume and make their own a hitherto unknown past, and understand that the EU is the guarantor of the rights and values violated to the extreme by the Nazi regime. The activities of this project, carried out in locations in Germany, France, Spain, and Belgium, UK and Austria as set out in the initial project proposal, have been:1.The construction of a website and a documentary repository, in which some thirty life stories of the Rotspaniers are collected, with photographs and documents recovered from different archives. It also includes a virtual tour of the project's exhibition. The repository includes interviews recorded throughout the project, as well as photographic and audiovisual material from Brest, Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Lorient, Saint-Malo, the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey, all scenes of the Rotspaniers' lives.2.A mobile exhibition (Spain, France, Germany) which has been seen in Berlin, Tarragona, Brest, Bremen, Gijón and thirteen other towns. It has also been shown at the European Parliament in Brussels. 3.The construction of an educational unit for young people (14-18 years). This unit was presented at a working day for secondary school teachers in Gijón (Asturias) and used in secondary schools in Asturias, Tarragona and Brest. One of the schools presented the work produced by the students at the European Parliament in Brussels (Belgium, EU), at a conference dedicated to memory.4.The organisation of scientific colloquia and tributes to the memory of the Rotspaniers in Brest (France), Berlin (Germany) and Gijón (Spain).A final activity, aimed at extending the dissemination of knowledge and recognition of the Rotspaniers, not initially planned, and arising from synergies with other entities following the scientific meeting in Brest. This consisted of the co-production of a documentary about the Rotspanier entitled "Rotspanier, the Spanish slaves of Nazism"
Start Date: 01-10-2020
End Date: 31-03-2023
Duration in months: 30
Total Budget: 156240
Details
Year (Call): 2020
Country: 20000883 20000890 20000873
Activity: Strand1: European Remembrance
Coordinator
Organisation: UNIVERSITAT ROVIRA I VIRGILI
Address: CARRER DE ESCORXADOR
Postal Code: 43003
City: TARRAGONA
Country:
Region: Spain Extra-Regio NUTS 2
Organisation type: Higher education institution (tertiary level)
PIC: 999880560
ASOCIACION PARA LA RECUPERACION DE LA MEMORIA HISTORICA
Address: AVENIDA DE PORTUGAL 23 PLANTA 6 PUERTA I FLORES DEL SIL
Postal Code: 24403
Region: Castilla y León
City: PONFERRADA LEON
PIC: 949687425
AMICAL DE MAUTHAUSEN Y OTROS CAMPOS Y DE TODAS LAS VÍCTIMAS DEL NAZISMO DE ESPAÑA
Address: SILS, 1 BAIXOS
Postal Code: 08002
Region: Cataluña
City: BARCELONA
PIC: 921181259
AJUNTAMENT DE TARRAGONA
Address: PLACA DE LA FONT 1
Postal Code: 43003
Region: Spain Extra-Regio NUTS 2
City: TARRAGONA
PIC: 952468415
ATENEO OBRERO DE GIJON
Address: CALLE COVADONGA, 7-1º IZDA.33201
Postal Code: 33201
Region: Principado de Asturias
City: GIJÓN
PIC: 901705211
UNIVERSITE DE BRETAGNE OCCIDENTALE
Address: RUE DES ARCHIVES 3 CS 93837
Postal Code: 29238
Region: Bretagne
City: BREST CEDEX 3
PIC: 999902676
MERE 29
Address: 1 RUE PAUL FOUCHER
Postal Code: 29200
Region: Bretagne
City: BREST
PIC: 896412600
STIFTUNG ETTERSBERG
Address: JENAER STR. 4
Postal Code: 99425
Region: THÜRINGEN
City: WEIMAR
PIC: 920626128
ARCHÄOLOGISCHE GESELLSCHAFT IN BERLIN UND BRANDENBURG E.V.
Address: FABECKSTRASSE 23-25
Postal Code: 14195
Region: BERLIN
City: BERLIN
PIC: 896165347
Within the Europe for Citizens Programme, the information available on the Website refers to the content submitted by the beneficiaries, as the data is retrieved directly from the application, at the moment of the selection.