The Diplomat
The King and Queen of Spain, together with the President of Austria, Alexander van Der Bellen, honoured yesterday in Vienna the victims of Nazism and, in particular, the Spanish who died in the Mauthausen concentration camp. They also inaugurated an exhibition on Salvador Dalí and Sigmud Freud on the occasion of their first official visit to Austria.
Don Felipe and Doña Letizia, who travelled accompanied by the Minister of Culture, Miquel Iceta, were received with honours at the Hofburg Imperial Palace by the Austrian President and the First Lady, Doris Schmidauer.
Afterwards, the King held a meeting with Van Der Bellen, in which the delegations from both countries took part, while Doña Letizia held a meeting with the First Lady, with whom they discussed “working matters of common interest”, according to Zarzuela.
Afterwards, the King and Queen attended a lunch with Van Der Bellen and his wife, who invited them to make this, their first visit to Austria.
In the afternoon, Don Felipe and Doña Letizia, together with the President and the First Lady, laid a wreath in memory of all the victims of National Socialism and especially the Spanish victims of the Mauthausen concentration camp. After the King and Van der Bellen laid wreaths in the colours of the Spanish and Austrian flags at the monument to the victims of Nazism, a minute’s silence was observed.
Mauthausen is known as the “Spanish camp” because of the many Republicans who suffered and died there. Of the more than 15,000 Spaniards deported to Nazi concentration camps during World War II, some 7,000 ended up in Mauthausen and its satellites, such as Gusen. This was the camp which held the most prisoners and where the vast majority of the more than 4,400 Spanish Republican victims died.
The visit concluded with the inauguration by the King and Queen and the Austrian President of the exhibition “Dalí and Freud. An obsession” at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna.
Don Felipe and Doña Letizia toured the exhibition, which explores the reciprocal influence between surrealism and psychoanalysis through the relationship between Dalí and Freud, accompanied by its curator, Professor Jaime Brihuega.
The visit, emphasised Zarzuela, “is part of the good relations between the two countries and constitutes a propitious opportunity to express the desire to continue strengthening the deep historical, political, cultural and human ties that exist between Austria and Spain”.
