Caldes en Temps de Guerres

Prats Thermal Spa – Totem Pole

Prats Thermal Spa was one of the town’s thermal baths that accommodated refugees. Also, in the inventory of availability to accommodate Italian sailors from 1944, it was noted that Prats Thermal Spa had capacity for 195 soldiers.

On 13th September of that year, Meino von Eitzen arrived in Caldes accompanied by his wife and children. Von Eitzen was a high ranking German on the Russian front, where he was wounded and transferred to Vigo to participate in and manage tungsten businesses, which was one of the mine resources that Franco made available to Nazi Germany. Living at Prats Thermal Spa, von Eitzen asked Rosa Riera, inhabitant of Caldes, to look after his children. Her sister, Serafina Riera, recalls that he was pleasant, along with the other Germans in Caldes: “Some returned to Caldes a few years later to spend the summer, for example von Eitzen’s daughters.”