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Spain holds funeral mass to remember Germanwings victims

Xinhua, April 28, 2015 Adjust font size:

Spain on Monday held a funeral mass in the northeastern city of Barcelona in remembrance of the 150 victims who died in the Germanwings plane crash en route from Barcelona to Dusseldorf on March 24 in the French Alps.

The ceremony took place at the Sagrada Familia, the unfinished church designed by the catalan architect Antoni Gaudi.

King Felipe VI and Queen of Spain, Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and Artur Mas, president of the region of Catalonia, attended the ceremony.

Around 1,500 people, including around 600 families and friends' victims, representatives of the Islamic community in Catalonia, the Jewish community and the Evangelical community, as well as members from emergency units of France, Spain and Germany, attended the funeral mass.

The mass started with students from a highschool from Llinars del Valles, who offered a total of 150 candles, each one to remember the victims on board of the flight 4U9525, including 16 German students who spent a few days in this highschool.

The funeral ended with the Spanish King Felipe VI and Spanish Queen Letizia Ortiz offering condolences and comforting victims' families along with the Cardinal Archbishop of Barcelona Lluis Martinez Sistach.

They were followed by Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and his wife Elvira Fernandez and the Catalan President Artur Mas and his wife, Helena Rakosnik.

Before that, religious representatives sent their condolences to the families and friends of the victims.

The Airbus 320 aircraft crashed in the French Alps on March 24. It was operated by Lufthansa's budget airline Germanwings and preliminary investigations said that the co-pilot seemed to intentionally crash it. Endit