Stumbling stone, Madrid

Stolpersteine, or stumbling stones, are small, square, brass memorials inserted in the pavements and streets of urban areas to remember the victims of National Socialism. First initiated in Germany in 1992 by artist Gunter Demnig, they commemorate the lives of individuals outside their last freely chosen address or place of work. Tens of thousands of such memorials to Nazi victims have now been installed across Europe. 

Stolpersteine were first introduced to Spain in Catalonia in 2015, but there are now hundreds across the country. The first in Madrid was installed on 26 April 2019. This memorial placed outside a house in Calle Augusto Figueroa 6, in central Madrid, commemorates José Martínez Álvarez who had been born in Trubia (Asturias) and was deported to the Mauthausen Concentration Camp in 1941 and killed in the Gusen sub-camp in 1942.

Approximately 7,500 Spaniards who had fled to France at the end of the Civil War were deported to Mauthausen in Austria, where they were subjected to forced labour in atrocious conditions. It is thought that two thirds of them died in the camp. 

In artistic terms, stolpersteine are intended as surprise memorials. Laid flush with the pavement, the pedestrian stumbles upon them. They remind those who encounter them that terror and violence can easily pervade everyday life. For this reason, Demning refers to them as ‘warnings’. In Spain, they reflect a double victimization, first at the hands of the Nationalists, then second by the Nazis.