Irun is distributed over large railways, currently in disuse. In these areas there are cars or pavilions looking abandoned. It gets strange. For many citizens the railway environment is unknown, especially since it has never been urbanized, access and buildings are closed and there is no representation of what has existed. The pads must ask Adif for authorization to be able to visualize under conditions the buildings located at the margins of the tracks.

The area that Kepa Ordoki Memoria Histórico Bidasoan met in 2018 is so unknown that in Irun there is a Francoist concentration framework called Small Speed, attached to the former Customs of Mugetxe Street. The name refers to the railway system and in Palencia there is a building of the same trace. In Nere lau urteko ibilaldiak, by writer Jose Mari Etxaburu Kamiñazpi, this space was first known, which was moved to San Pedro de Cardena. Between 1939 and 1942 the enclosure was active, to which those who came from the Avenue Bridge after the 1936 war were moved. Peli Lekuona, a member of Kepa Ordoki, took to La Magdalena (Santander, Spain), San Pedro de Cardena (Burgos, Spain) and Miranda de Ebro (Burgos, Spain). They didn't stay long. "The captivity, accumulation and dispersion of hundreds of detainees who started in the Bidasoa", can be read on the web that the association has successfully developed. Most of the Spanish State's concentration frameworks were closed in 1939, except for Irún. There were five in total. The presence of Railway Hilanteras in the current tanatory stands out. Women, children and the elderly, only Small-Speed men were captive, communist and militia or Republican military.

To know how many people went through the men's space, there's a big dance of numbers. According to the documents received by Kepa Ordoki, there were at least 4,000 people. “The initial documents [refer to the years 1939, 1940 and 1941] basically contained figures, how many entered and how many left,” Lekuona said. French historian Maelle Maugendre states that in 1939, 98,000 inhabitants passed through the Avenue Bridge. The member of the association has drawn two conclusions: “On the one hand, the number of people going through here was huge. On the other hand, most of them went through Little Velocida."

Endangered history

The building is now in danger. In fact, the City of Irun has three projects to cover the roads and develop the environment. In the project called Environment Station, it is possible to clearly read the forecast of dumping of the concentration point. They want to build a walkway there. In this regard, Lekuona appeared last Friday in plenary, explaining that it did not melt down and that they requested his declaration as the centre of the Democratic Memory. They want it to be the Customs building and the Francoist Victim Memory Center, Small Speed, the first in the Spanish state. Lekuona explained that the three projects are contradictory to the building because each one has its own criteria and objectives.

The first specifies that the space will be maintained as far as possible, but the second will be discarded. At the moment, the City Hall says it wants to demolish it partially, "take the facade, move back and rebuild it", according to Lekuona. The Deputy Mayor, Miguel Angel Paez, advanced in plenary that they want to mark the location of the pavilion on the ground. He says that this proposal is not valid, which is what the 'local executioners' would want.

This is a long-term struggle for the slowness of the railway project. Those of the association are concerned that the change of municipal government can condition the entire Vía Irun and the current economic crisis. The problem has already been socialized and they are convinced that it will not be treated as if space did not exist in the name of knowledge. “When the debate arises, people will say, ‘Via Irun yes, but how?’