The President of the Government of Catalonia, Pere Aragonès i García, stated today that “memory is the best antidote against fascism and all forms of totalitarianism”. The head of the Executive made these statements during the placing of a Stolperstein paving stone in Masquefa in memory of Miquel Rovira Isart, executed on 1 December 1941 in the Gusen concentration camp.

The head of the executive urged citizens to stand up to the “discourse of fear that sees the other not as a fellow citizen but as the enemy”. According to the President of the Generalitat, we must make sure that “terror and fascism do not reappear in what is a difficult social, political and economic context”. In this regard, he called for “the defence of a cohesive society in terms of rights and freedoms and social justice, as well as collective rights and freedoms”, among which he placed “the democratic and national rights and freedoms of Catalonia”.

During the event, President Aragonès gave his opinion on the demonstration held this morning in Barcelona against the amnesty and declared it a “failure of the right and the far right”. And he added that “the failure of the demonstration compels us more than ever to fight for amnesty and self-determination”. “Today they are fewer than ever and opposing them is a very large social majority in Catalonia who want to freely decide their future”, he concluded.

As the President of the Government of Catalonia explained, “Faced with a Spanish right and far right with a discourse based on contempt, hatred, and vengeance, there is a joyful Catalonia, a Catalonia that looks to the future, and it will decide its future without repression”.

Miquel Rovira Isart

Miquel Rovira Isart was born in Masquefa on 11 September 1900. Despite coming from a family of farmers, with the advent of industrialisation he began to work in the metalworking factory Viuda e Hijos de Rogelio Rojo. The Second Republic saw him enter politics and with the outbreak of the civil war he was called up to fight. After retreating with the Republican troops to France, he began a tour of French concentration camps and, with the occupation of French territory by the Germans, he was deported to Mauthausen (Austria). From there he was taken to Gusen, where he died on 1 December 1941.