The Government has answered a question from Compromís-Sumar deputy Alberto Ibáñez in which he was interested in knowing “what actions” the Ministry of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory was going to carry out “to guarantee that the democratic memory law is complied with ” and eliminate Francoist streets “from some municipalities in whose streets still persist.” In his response, the Executive transfers responsibility to the city councils and reminds the parliamentarian that it is these administrations that are responsible for “compliance with the law, prior agreement by the municipal plenary session.” The reply did not please the parliamentarian at all, who believes that Ángel Víctor Torres’ department should force compliance with the law.
In his writing, Ibáñez maintains that “memory is fundamental to caring for democracy and repairing historical injustices,” and adds that “language and the symbolic play a fundamental role because they construct reality.” For this reason, he regrets that “today there are still municipalities with names modified by Francoism that pay homage in some way to the dictatorship.”
Specifically, the deputy cites three municipalities in Castilla-La Mancha: Alberche del Caudillo (Toledo); Llanos del Caudillo (Ciudad Real) and Numancia de la Sagra (Toledo), which was previously called Azaña, a name that the Franco regime ordered to change to the current one despite not responding to any relationship with the president of the Second Republic given that Its nomenclature dates back to the Middle Ages. Also three from Castilla y León: Quintanilla de Onísimo (Valladolid) and Alcocero de Mola (Burgos), and San Leonardo de Yagüe (Soria); one from Extremadura, Villafranco del Guadiana (Badajoz) and another from Andalusia, Villafranco del Guadalhorce, district of Alhaurín el Grande (Málaga).
In its response, the Secretary of State for Relations with the Cortes, which is responsible for processing all written questions sent to the Government, reminds Ibáñez that, indeed, article 35.2 of Law 20/2022, of 19 October, of Democratic Memory, establishes that “references made in place names, in the street map or in the names of public centers, of the military uprising and the Dictatorship, of its leaders, participants in the repressive system or the organizations that supported the dictatorship.” But it then refers to article 35.3 of the same law which provides that “public administrations, in the exercise of their powers and territory, will adopt the appropriate measures for the removal of said elements.”
The Government finally takes refuge in the fact that article 14.1 of the aforementioned regulations dictates that “the actions carried out by public administrations in matters of democratic memory, in their respective areas of competence, will be governed by the principle of collaboration and subsidiarity, and in In any case, they will respect the legitimate exercise by the other Administrations of their powers”, which is why it concludes that “in this sense, it should be added that it is up to the town councils to comply with the provisions, through the adoption of the appropriate agreement by the Municipal Plenary, in accordance with to the current regulations of the local regime.”
Ibáñez: “The Ministry should force compliance with the law”
The Compromís-Sumar deputy has reacted angrily to the Government’s response. In statements to this editorial team, Ibáñez points out that “in a serious reactionary context, with the rise of the extreme right around the world, it is urgent that the law of democratic memory be applied in its full extent.” “There is a Ministry of democratic memory, of historical memory, that should force local administrations, which are public administrations and are also part of the State, to comply with the law,” Ibáñez considers. “Today still have municipalities with names of relevant figures or allusions to the Franco dictatorship is unacceptable,” he concludes.
Furthermore, from their group they remember that the current Government of the Generalitat Valenciana, formed by PP and Vox, registered last April in Les Corts Valencianes a “proposal for a Law of Concord” that goes “against the current memory norm democratic and that suppresses the word dictatorship and speaks only of Francoism” and with which “it intends to eliminate the map of mass graves and all types of public aid to associations that work in the search for relatives murdered during Francoism and are buried in said common graves.”
More than 5,000 Francoist symbols in the cities
According to a report prepared two years ago by the project ShouldDisappear, launched by the Jesús Pereda Foundation of CCOO, at that time some 5,600 Francoist symbols were still present in Spanish cities and municipalities in the form of plaques on homes, but also in street names, inscriptions or shields. All contrary to the democratic memory protected by law.
Among them is the Victory Arch in Madrid, which honors the triumph of the rebels of the Civil War, whose demolition has been requested by Podemos. However, the delegate of Culture, Tourism and Sports of the Madrid City Council, Marta Rivera de la Cruz, of the PP, announced last year that the Consistory was going to sign an agreement with the Complutense University to restore and take care of the maintenance of the monument located in the Madrid district of Moncloa to give it “cultural use.”
Add Comment