In May 1939, in order to “accommodate such just aspirations of the relatives of those who gloriously fell victim to Red barbarism”, taxes on “burials, exhumations and transfers of the bodies” of people “murdered under tragic circumstances” were abolished by law or died”. of the front and whose burials were repeatedly carried out in unsuitable places”. The Francisco Franco Company. The BOE also includes regime decrees and orders to establish a protocol for exhumations, expropriate land if necessary, prepare a census of the disappeared, grant “Medals of Suffering for the Homeland,” and provide large pensions to victims of the civil war. Only the winning side. While the dictator enacted his own commemorative law for those “fallen by God and Spain,” the vanquished crowded prisons, pits, and ditches; They were barred from their jobs and their assets confiscated.
In 2007, under the socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the first Historical Remembrance Law was passed to repair those that were not repaired. In many ways it was less ambitious than the legislation Franco himself left in the BOE to honor and compensate the winning side. The dictator had died 32 years earlier, but the debate over the law so heated the mood in Parliament that one MP from the defunct CiU said they had made him go out drinking because of what he had heard in Congress It seemed “crazy” to me. In October 2022, a new law called “Democratic Memory” was passed to address shortcomings that the United Nations and victim groups had pointed out in the previous law, such as the fact that the state had not taken on the entire process of searching disappeared persons of the Franco regime and was assigned to family associations with subsidies. The Cortes said that this legislation was “cainita”, “indecent”, “totalitarian”, “revanchist” and that it “reopens wounds”. Also: that it concluded that it was “a moral duty”, “an act of justice”, “a strengthening of democratic values”.
View of the helicopter transporting the remains of Francisco Franco after his exhumation from the Valley of the Fallen in 2019. Mariscal (EFE)
Almost 800 mass graves were opened between 2000 and 2019, from which the remains of around 9,700 people who were shot were recovered. A further 513 were exhumed between 2019 and 2022. During the years of the PP government, these operations were carried out thanks to autonomous communities and municipalities. The then President Mariano Rajoy boasted that he had invested zero euros in the application of the standard.
In October 2019, the government, in a decision supported by the three branches of the state (legislative, executive and judiciary), transferred the remains of Franco from the memorial in the Valley of the Fallen, now called Cuelgamuros, to the Mingorrubio Cemetery, in El Pardo. The action, so that no protagonist of the coup, war or dictatorship would occupy a prominent place that could serve as a place of pilgrimage for nostalgics, was repeated with the remains of the founder of the Falange, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, in the same mausoleum and those of Gonzalo Queipo de Llano at the Basilica of La Macarena in Seville. The transfer of the graves of the putschist Milans del Bosch and the Franco general José Moscardó to the crypt of the Alcázar de Toledo were still pending. The law’s entry into force also meant the annulment of 33 peerages bestowed by the regime and the overturning of sentences imposed by Franco’s courts, a long-standing claim by victims.
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In June, after a spate of appeals from pro-Franco and anti-memorial groups, the government launched exhumations in the crypts of the Cuelgamuros Valley to try and recover the remains of 133 people buried there without their consent to return to families. Currently, they have already managed to identify four victims, including Fausto Canales’ father, who began the fight to rescue them more than 20 years ago. The work, which involves a multidisciplinary team of forensic experts, archaeologists and science officers, is extremely complex as the humidity has affected the digging boxes. Experts estimate it will take months, and families fear a change in government will paralyze these exhumations. The descendants of the reprisals buried in the mausoleum, like the children of those still lying in tombs and ditches, are very old.
The memorial policy has been in use for almost 16 years and has not resulted in any confrontation between the descendants of either side. Yes, harsh attacks and allegations between parties that deal with the processing of the most tragic past in a completely different way. These are the positions, programmatic actions and statements of the main candidates for 23-J on this topic.
PSOE: “A matter of state”
United Nations Commissioner Pablo de Greiff, who is currently in Ukraine on a mission to gather evidence of war crimes, advised the government on the drafting of the Democratic Memory Law. He insists that commemorative politics “are a matter of state and respond to international obligations”. This is the epigraph “State Question” that the PSOE uses to title the section on this topic in its election manifesto. The text ensures that at a time when Spain and the rest of Europe are experiencing “a resurgence of ultra-right movements” there is a need to reaffirm “commitment to the defense of human rights and the condemnation of all forms of political totalitarianism”. The Socialists are proposing to advance aspects of the law that were pending in the last legislature: completing the exhumation plan with a state DNA bank; prepare a census of casualties, confiscated assets, and works constructed with imprisoned labor; conclude “the incorporation of the contents of democratic memory into the education system” – a recent study revealed deep gaps among young people -; promote the elimination of foundations and associations that advocate Francoism; and transform the Cuelgamuros Valley into a place of democratic memory. Socialist candidate Pedro Sánchez explained that the government passed the law “to pay gratitude to those who worked for a democratic Spain” and to put Spanish legislation “on an equal footing with the legislation of other democracies that were also under fascism have suffered”. Foundations that bear the name of Adolf Hitler, for example, are unthinkable.
Minister Félix Bolaños kisses Benita Navacerrada, the daughter of a man shot dead in 1939, during his visit to the tomb in Colmenar Viejo Cemetery (Madrid). Natalia Ruiz Guillamon
PP: Repealed and replaced by the “Law of Concord”
The PP proposes repealing the memorial law and replacing it with another one, without specifying what it would consist of, and about talking about “an agreed norm that respects the democratic principles and national reconciliation that established the constitutional pact during the transition , as well as democratic coexistence” strengthens a society, the Spanish, which strives for justice and recognition of the truth.” Feijóo assures that the Democratic Memorial Law represents “attacks on the spirit of transition” – although the legal text already mentions this period in the first paragraphs praises – and usually dismisses the matter on the grounds that he cares “more about the living than the dead”: “There is no point in living off the income our grandparents made 80 years ago.” A government that rekindles grudges is a government that doesn’t respect the constitution.” During the face-to-face meeting with Sánchez, he assured that “the so-called law of democratic memory” applies [él la denomina “la ley Bildu”] it’s a disgrace”. The five Abertzale-left MPs in Congress backed the bill, which passed by a 173-vote vote. The PP accuses the executive of turning “ETA’s heirs” into “frontmen” of history, because of an additional provision of the law that provides for the establishment of a commission of experts to investigate possible violations of human rights already in the democracy by 1983. But it was not the nationalist left who suggested this: the PSOE and Unidas Podemos registered this change in their own text , to include victims like Yolanda González, murdered by the extreme right in 1980. In no case, explained Secretary of State for Democratic Remembrance Fernando Martínez, it is a matter of considering them as victims of Francoism, right down to those who fell under the GAL have suffered.
We promise to repeal the so-called Democratic Memory Act, which runs counter to the spirit of transition.
Bildu cannot be the notary rewriting the history of Spain.https://t.co/SkzbbGMfws
— Alberto Núñez Feijóo (@NunezFeijoo) October 5, 2022
Sumar: Law on Official Secrets and Stolen Babies
The Sumar programme, which brings together 16 left-wing groups including Podemos, which was part of the coalition government, sees the memorial law as “a significant step forward” and, like the PSOE, is committed to developing the measures. The text stresses the need for a reform of the law on official secrets for free access to archives and proposes a gradual increase in “the annual budget” for searching for the disappeared; Pay tribute to “those places or milestones” relevant to the struggle of the LGTBI collective in the democratic transition and converting the Carabanchel prison, the Barcelona model, the building of the Higher Police Headquarters on Via Laietana in the same city to the field of concentration Castuera ( Badajoz) and the Banús department in the Cuelgamuros Valley in places of remembrance. Sumar also proposes promoting the “stolen babies bill” pending in the last legislature. The left-wing coalition is committed to ensuring that this regulation “simplifies the search process” and “the statute of limitations starts to run from the moment the victim’s identity is restored”. “Democratic memory”, Yolanda Díaz assured after the withdrawal of Franco’s Labor medal, “does not allow for shadow areas, nor justice and reparations for the victims of the dictatorship”.
Vox: closure of “the beach bars”
The most belligerent party with politics of memory is the one that assured the Chamber of Deputies that this was “the worst government in 80 years”, that is to say that life was better with Franco and the dictatorship. In 2020, they already proposed repealing the Law of Remembrance, considering it “a direct attack on individual liberty, showing good and bad in the history of Spain”. Vox mixes memory law with LGTBI law on its show [la ley trans] Because both, they say, “encourage confrontation and division between Spaniards” and are “totalitarian nonsense.” They promise to repeal them, close “all publicly funded beach bars” and suspend “subsidies and aid to private entities.” In the same chapter, they propose to abolish “the special prosecutors with purely ideological purposes, such as those for democratic remembrance, those for hate crimes and discrimination, and those for violence against women” and, like the PP, propose “a law of to say goodbye to concord that promotes encounter and reconciliation and whose purpose is to overcome divisions and hostilities between Spaniards”. Vox leader Santiago Abascal has called the commemoration norm “a libertarian law inappropriate for a democracy” and has pressured the PP to repeal regional laws on the issue in their autonomy pacts.
PSOE
– Turn the Cuelgamuros Valley into a place of remembrance.
– Proceed with the exhumation plan and the state DNA bank.
– Promote the annihilation of the Franco Foundation.
– Encouraging the creation of a major center for democratic remembrance.
pp
– Repeal the law of democratic memory and replace it with another one called “Harmony”.
Add to
– Approve the law on official secrets.
– Pass the Stolen Babies Act
– Transform the Carabanchel prison into a place of remembrance.
– Acknowledge and address the oppression of women and LGBTI+ people during the Franco regime.
vox
– Repeal of the Memory Law.
– Adoption of a “law of harmony”.
– Eliminate the “ideological beach bars” and the specialized public prosecutor’s office.
Consult all reports in the series, which analyzes the parties’ promises on some important issues for the country’s future
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