MADRID: Spanish prosecutors on Monday said they were investigating whether General Francisco Franco鈥檚 dictatorship collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II to send thousands of exiled Spaniards in France to death camps.
Thousands of Spaniards fled to France after Franco鈥檚 Fascist-backed nationalists overthrew a republic in the 1936-1939 civil war, only to find themselves under Nazi occupation in France from 1940.
The investigation will 鈥渃larify the relevant responsibilities and the existence of a possible joint strategy鈥� between Franco鈥檚 dictatorship and Nazi Germany 鈥渋n the detention and subsequent transfer of thousands of Spaniards exiled in France to different extermination camps,鈥� the public prosecutor鈥檚 office said.
The Mauthausen camp in Austria was among the sites where the republican exiles 鈥渨ere subjected to forced labor, torture, disappearance and murder,鈥� the prosecutor鈥檚 office added.
The human rights and democratic memory section of the office will lead the inquiry into the 4,435 recorded dead.
The prosecutors鈥� office said the probe coincided with the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Mauthausen and was launched in accordance with a divisive 2022 democratic memory law.
The left-wing government passed the legislation in a bid to tackle the legacy of the civil war and honor victims of violence and persecution under Franco, who ruled with an iron fist until his death in 1975.
The right-wing opposition says the left is trying to reopen the wounds of the past with the law and has vowed to repeal it if they return to power.