Sinister warning signs

The eightieth anniversary of the liberation of the Mauthausen Nazi concentration camp has been commemorated. King Felipe and Queen Letizia attended to lay a wreath at the memorial for the Spanish Republicans who died or, like my uncle Joaquín López Raimundo, survived that hell (Primo Levi used to say that the camps were a "sinister warning sign"). Our correspondent María-Paz López explains that, during the offering, applause was heard, as well as a cry of "Long live the Republic!" The scene contains all the contradictions of modern Spain: a Bourbon who, as head of an imperfectly democratic state, praised the fight against Nazism and for freedom more emphatically than the parties that should identify with these ideals (but are too busy practicing cannibalism).

This isn't the first time the King and Queen have taken on a symbolic role that, for those of us who come from the republican tradition, still grates on us. It's a dissonance born of the uniqueness of the transition and the King and Queen's desire to modernize their role, in contrast to the (suspiciously enthusiastic) dismantling of the myth of the emeritus king. I remember that Uncle Joaquín, after being repeatedly asked to write his memoirs (four years in the concentration camps, between Mauthausen and Gusen) and recount his fraternal friendship with the photographer Francesc Boix, tackled the nagging of his entourage with a text that, inspired by Dante's circles, took refuge in childhood nostalgia. I had heard him say not to trust survivors who talk about the camps all the time, because the experience was so harsh that the logical thing to do is never speak of it again. I also remember the first sentence of the text he wrote about Mauthausen: “My first memory of Mauthausen was fear.”

The trip of the Kings to Mauthausen has a symbolic value that dignifies their position.

Joaquín was a unique survivor. Without ever losing his communist militancy, he enjoyed the social distinction of French and German pensions. He loved inviting me to ride the Paris metro—he had two free passes, as a veteran—and sauerkraut in an Alsatian restaurant, and giving me cassettes of Gardel tangos. His last wish wasn't a political proclamation, but rather, as a final commitment to his Aragonese origins, he asked for two fried eggs.

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Another commemoration, less momentous and more prosaic: the first anniversary since Salvador Illa won the elections . The president appeared on the Café d'idees (Radio 4, La 2) and, without altering his defining tone, didn't fuel any of the controversies that could degenerate into festering headlines. Gemma Nierga, who bombarded him with every possible topic, must have put an end to the sense of failure of the hunter who returns home with an empty bag. Some compare him to President Montilla, but I would say that Illa plays more with monotonous evasion, while Montilla practiced a rhetoric that worked through exhaustion.