The process of eliminating what remains of Francoism in the cities of the Canary Islands, particularly in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, has encountered a new obstacle. The Supreme Court of the Canary Islands has provisionally suspended the catalog of Francoist remains that is developing the 2007 Historical Memory and 2022 Democratic Memory laws for not having been published in full in an official bulletin, leaving it without legal effect. The document – which has been contested by the Raíces Historical Memory Claim Association – suggests to communities what items should be removed from their streets because of their homage to the dictatorship. The Canary Islands government understands that while the court upheld the lawsuit brought by the group, which is very active in defending Francoist remnants, the order neither challenges the catalogue, nor interferes with the substance of the law. and that the shortcoming in its solution “it will be acknowledged by full publication” of the catalog in the official bulletin of the Autonomous Community (BOC), which they assure will be done “immediately”.
The court – composed of judges Juan Ignacio Moreno-Luque Casariego, Jaime Guilarte Martín-Calero and Evaristo González González – argued that the order issued by the Government of the Canary Islands’ Ministry of Education was published in the Official Journal of the Canary Islands, with which it was supposed to come into force entered, the full contents of the catalog were not included but reference was made to the Ministry of Education website. “The publication of each administrative decision (…) must be complete and in the relevant official bulletin,” say the judges in their resolution of April 28, to which EL PAÍS had access. “It is not possible to refer to a ministry’s website, the content of which could also be changed by the administrative department governing it.”
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In Santa Cruz de Tenerife alone, at least 79 Francoist vestiges are preserved – monuments, street names, shields, awards … – according to this catalog prepared by the regional executive in accordance with the regional regulation approved in 2018. He stands out above The so-called Monument to the Dictator Francisco Franco has been in the heart of Santa Cruz de Tenerife since 1966, the last of those left in Spain dedicated to the dictator. The leaders of the City Council (ruled almost continuously since 1983 by the Coalition of the Canary Islands or its predecessors) resist demands, pressure from the regional executive (PSOE, Podemos, Nueva Canarias and Agrupación Socialista Gomera), studies or requests from associations of the Canary Islands historical memory.
The first version of the catalog includes the monuments of the capital of Tenerife. Precisely this aspect is the main argument of Mayor José Manuel Bermúdez (Coalition of the Canary Islands) to oppose the elimination of what is left of the dictatorship. “Santa Cruz de Tenerife has been removing symbols of Francoist origin for years,” the mayor recently wrote to this newspaper. “What this capital demands is legal certainty in order to apply the law.” “PSOE and Podemos try to show that it is a catalog of regional scope, but oddly enough it only refers to remnants of one municipality, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the very only one that did its homework years ago,” he added added. For his part, Deputy Minister for Culture and Heritage Juan Márquez (Podemos) asserted in November that “failure to comply with the law creates legal uncertainty”. “The sensible thing, and this is supported by the legal services reports, is that it will be completed when the contributions from the other communities come in,” he added.
This is the second setback the Canarian government has suffered before the Canarian High Court this year as it seeks to dismantle key reminders of dictatorship that linger on the islands. In January, the same chamber that had exposed the catalog agreed to protect as a precaution the monument dedicated to Franco erected in the center of Santa Cruz de Tenerife (a sculpture by Juan de Ávalos) pending the appeal of an association against the Island Council’s decision not to declare it a Site of Cultural Interest. In this case, the group that obtained temporary protection for the monument was the Association for the Investigation and Protection of the Historical Heritage San Miguel Arcángel. On that occasion, the Supreme Court considered that the law provided for “the possibility of a reinterpretation or meaning” of the monument “in a sense other than that of a Franco monument,” reports Efe.
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