This year marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Spanish Civil War and the forced departure of thousands of Spanish Republicans and Republicans to France, America or North Africa.
The Minister of Health has recalled that on this anniversary the Government recognizes all these people the contributions they had already made to Spanish society and the contributions they made in other countries.
He also wanted to take advantage of this 80th anniversary so that Spanish society became aware of the magnitude of the exile. This recognition is also an opportunity to elaborate a collective duel for "the great loss" suffered by Spain, "both in cultural, intellectual and professional terms and above all human."
María Luisa Carcedo has remembered health professionals, mostly doctors, practitioners, pharmacists and registered nurses. Also to the members of the International Brigades, health professionals.
In her speech, the Minister of Justice has also reminded all doctors, nurses and nurses, practitioners and other health personnel "who were forced to abandon their roots, their families and their country, in many cases forever, to escape from civil war and Franco's repression. "
Dolores Delgado has indicated that, among the almost half a million Spaniards who crossed to France in the winter of 1939 there were "thousands of wounded and sick" who were treated by some 1,500 health professionals "who came out with the job, without means or therapeutic resources appropriate. " Despite this they did an extraordinary job.
María Luisa Carcedo has also stressed that in addition to attending other exiled Spaniards, exiled toilets were also providential in other countries. An example is the creation of the Emigration Service of Spanish Republicans (I WILL BE), which created the Republican Government after the defeat in Paris.
Its purpose was to evacuate the largest number of exiles from the French concentration camps and the first record of the camps from which the exiles emigrated with their families to the host countries was prepared.
The exiles who left the French concentration camps through the SERE went to Latin American countries, mostly to Mexico, but also to the Dominican Republic, Chile and Venezuela. The presence and integration of doctors and the rest of the exiled Spanish health professionals was key in the health progress of some Latin American countries that welcomed them.
This is the case in Mexico, which benefited from the impulse of the Spanish doctors who worked outside the capital. In Venezuela, where most of the rural areas were unhealthy due to malaria and tropical diseases, teaching and medical research in these areas also received an extraordinary boost.
Carcedo has finished his intervention defending the exercise of historical memory. "It is necessary for them and for them, for those who were, but also for those who will be. Necessary also for the effective and firm consolidation of our democracy."
Delgado has also referred to the rise of the extreme right, which "pretends that we do not talk about that part of our history" and "wants to erase the names of those who were brutally murdered by the dictatorship." "The attitudes we are seeing in recent days, such as the removal of the plates with the names of those shot in the Almudena cemetery, must reaffirm our commitment to truth, justice and reparation," he said.