The Memorial to the Victims of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp in Almería is a monument located in the Almadrabillas Park. It was created by the Almeria sculptor Mariángeles Guil and inaugurated in 1999. 1 It is made up of 142 columns, one for each of the Almeria victims of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp, forming an allegorical forest of columns of perseverance, struggle and suffering of these Almerians.
On March 20, 2012, it was one of the fourteen monuments declared Places of Historical Memory of Andalusia.
As a result of Franco's repression, many Republicans were forced into exile, crossing the border into France. Upon arrival, they found terrible living conditions in the concentration camps on the beaches of Roussillon. When France was occupied by the Nazis in 1940, many of them were captured by the SS and sent to Nazi extermination camps. The prisoners left on a cattle train, almost without oxygen, which rolled for days without anyone knowing if they were being transferred to Spain or another country.
Almost 1,500 Andalusians were interned in the Mauthausen concentration camp, of whom only a third came out alive. Of the more than a thousand fatalities, 142 were from Almería.
Antonio Muñoz Zamora was the last survivor of the Mauthausen camp in Almeria and one of the main promoters of the construction of the monument that today commemorates the victims of that camp in the Parque de las Almadrabillas, next to the old mineral cargo ship of the capital Almeria. Zamora managed to leave the Mauthausen concentration camp alive, weighing only 29 kilos. "We have even sucked the stones in recent days to resist and hope for the imminent liberation," he said. In 1963 he returned to Spain.