Vicens Gené Stolperstein Monument in Figueres

Set flush into the grey paving tiles of Figueres's Plaça de l'Ajuntament, the Vicens Gené Stolperstein monument is a small, ground-level memorial commemorating a local resident deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp during the Second World War. Installed on 10 October 2020, the 10-by-10-centimetre brass-plated stone was the first Stolperstein laid in Figueres and forms part of German artist Gunter Demnig's decentralized European memorial project.

Who Was Vicens Gené Llanet?

Vicens Gené Llanet—spelled Vicenç Gené Llanet in Generalitat de Catalunya archival records—was born in Figueres, in Catalonia's Alt Empordà region, on 18 August 1888. Publicly indexed municipal and archival sources preserve few details about his occupation, political affiliation, or everyday life in the city before his exile. His identity and last known free residence in the Plaça de l'Ajuntament were established through joint research by the Arxiu Municipal de Figueres, the Museu Memorial de l'Exili (MUME), the Grup de Treball Exili, Deportació i Holocaust, and the Associació Triangle Blau, supported by contributions from his family.

Exile, the Angoulême Convoy, and Mauthausen

Following the end of the Spanish Civil War, Gené fled into exile in France and was interned at Frontstalag 184 in Angoulême, in the Charente department. On 20 August 1940, German forces deported him from Angoulême aboard a convoy of 927 Spanish Republican refugees taken from the Les Alliers and La Combe aux Loups camps. Widely documented as the first deportation train of the Second World War to depart occupied France for a Nazi concentration camp, the transport carried Gené to Mauthausen in Austria.

Gené entered Mauthausen on 24 August 1940 and was assigned prisoner registration number 3911. While the women and children from the convoy were sent back to Francoist Spain via Irún, 430 men were forced off the train at the camp, where 354 perished, largely under forced labour in the granite quarry. Less than four months after arriving, Gené was murdered on 7 December 1940 at age 52. Under the Franco regime, Spanish Republican camp survivors were stripped of their nationality and rendered stateless, and official recognition in Spain was delayed for decades even after the democratic transition.

Design and Inscription of the Stolperstein

Like other memorials in Gunter Demnig's project, the monument is a 10-by-10-centimetre concrete cube topped with a brass plate. Demnig's workshop engraves each plaque by hand rather than by industrial machine, an intentional gesture of individual humanity meant to contrast with the industrialized extermination of the Nazi camp system. Embedded level with the surrounding pavement, the stone physically interrupts a pedestrian's stride, inviting passersby who look down to pause and read its Catalan inscription:

"Aquí visqué / VICENS GENÉ LLANET / Nascut 1888 / Exiliat / Deportat 1940 / Mauthausen / Assassinat 7.12.1940" ("Here lived Vicens Gené Llanet, Born 1888, Exiled, Deported 1940, Mauthausen, Murdered 7.12.1940").

Plaça de l'Ajuntament and Figueres's Memory Network

Gené's stone was unveiled in an official ceremony on 10 October 2020 attended by Catalonia's Minister of Justice Ester Capella, Figueres Mayor Agnès Lladó, and members of Gené's family, who held the brass stone before it was set into the pavement. It inaugurated an initial group of 11 Stolpersteine installed in Figueres under Catalonia's Memorial Democràtic program, later joined by a stone for Enric Moner Castell in October 2021 and a twelfth stone for Faustino Molina Velázquez in January 2026. Gené's granddaughter has also represented the family at official Amical de Mauthausen commemorations honouring Spanish Republican deportees.

The memorial sits in a square deeply tied to Figueres's civic and wartime history. Used as a market square since the 14th century and redesigned in 1819 by architect Rafael Cantró and master builder Narcís Papell, the Plaça de l'Ajuntament preserves neoclassical semicircular-arched porticoes along its southern corner alongside three-storey buildings, the Town Hall (Ajuntament), and radiating streets named for Peralada, Jonquera, Besalú, and Girona. Located roughly 120 metres from both the Plaça de Gala i Salvador Dalí and the Museu de l'Empordà, it was also the square where Catalan poster artist Carles Fontserè observed political figures such as Josep Tarradellas arranging border crossings during the 1939 Retirada exile—the same exodus that carried Gené to France. The plaza continues to host civic life, including community events such as the Festa de la Infància, while Figueres's 12 Stolpersteine serve as focal points for historical memory initiatives with secondary-school students from the Grup de Treball Exili, Deportació i Holocaust.