In the heart of Madrid de los Austrias is Calle San Nicolás, 11, the headquarters of the San Nicolás barracks. There are some sections dependent on the Headquarters of the Army Quartering Directorate, as well as the Patronato de Huérfanos. There is also the National Brotherhood of Former Legionary Knights, where yesterday the presentation of the book ‘Franco, a soldier’s service record’ was scheduled, with more than 500 pages of glosses on Franco’s military career, including the Civil War. elDiario.es has asked the Ministry of Defense if it knew that the act was going to be held in its own facilities and what it thinks about it, but for the moment it has not received an answer. The Democratic Memory Law fines up to 150,000 euros for acts of exaltation of Franco that humiliate the victims.
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The book in question is published by SND Editores, a label behind Álvaro Romero, patron of the Francisco Franco Foundation and author, in turn, of “Tejero, a man of honor”, along with another book exalting Franco. He also has a YouTube channel, ÑTV, which broadcasts pro-Franco, Falangist and anti-abortion content. The author is Francisco Torres, a high school professor, who with this book already has five books with “Franco” in the title, and has also treated favorably the figure of Blas Piñar, founder of Fuerza Nueva.
It is not the first act of presentation of the work in Madrid, but it is the first in public installations. In an interview between the editor and the author last December published on the former’s channel, both complained about “censorship” and agreed that Franco was a very good soldier, as well as being upset with those who questioned that he really suffered a war wound. The work is not a biography but a “commented documentation”, explains the author at one point. The interlocutors are used to discussing the Francoist figure. At one point in the talk, Romero reminds viewers that both are involved in another program on the channel dedicated to his figure. Towards the end, the driver boasts that he is “trying to close some important presentation in Madrid” and the other jokes, insinuating that if he reveals it, they can cancel it.
Praises for Franco have a higher legal cost for his addicts since the Democratic Memory Law was approved last year. Its article 62.1 considers a very serious offense, subject to a sanction of 10,001 to 150,000 euros, “the calls for acts, dissemination campaigns or publicity that by any means of public communication, in written or verbal form, in its sound elements or in its images, incite personal or collective exaltation, of the military uprising, of the War or of the Dictatorship, of its leaders, participants in the repressive system or of the organizations that supported the dictatorial regime, when it entails discredit, contempt or humiliation of the victims or their next of kin. The evaluation of what “humiliation” means is the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Memory of Democrática.