Proposal for monument at San Pedro concentration camp turned down
Photo montage of the proposed monument at San Pedro de Cardeña.
Nacho García serves on the Burgos Committee to Honor the International Brigades that is attempting to to install a monument to the Brigades on the grounds of San Pedro de Cardeña, the site of the former concentration camp. He reports here that, after a long delay, the local authorities have turned down requests for the installation of the monument. The monument pictured in Nacho’s blog post was first created for the 75th Anniversary tribute which took place on the grounds of San Pedro during October 2011. Nacho exposes the fascist history of the monastery and exhorts the ecclesiastical authorities to make the cemetery where Brigade and Basque prisoners are buried accessible not only to the occasional rare visit from an immediate family member of a former prisoner, but to the entire public. He also contrasts Burgos’ refusal to allow a monument with the growing number of international cities which have monuments honoring the Brigades, including San Francisco. Read the whole piece here.
It is disappointing, but not surprising, that the government of traditionally right wing Burgos would turn down this memorial. The fact that the cemetery remains closed to the public is disturbing and hardly needs a permit from the Civil Authorities to fix.
We don’t have a great record in this country of memorializing our own concentration camps. I used to drive by Manzanar and see one pitiful little sign about the lives that were changed forever there. I am pleased to see that it now is a national park … http://www.nps.gov/manz/index.htm
Sorry, small correction… it is a National Historic Monument not a park