2023-06-17 22:50:00
The Law of Democratic Memory of Spain, which was revived since its sanction in 2022 the debates around the democratic transition, enabled this week to begin to exhume for the first time from the State to the victims of the civil war (1936-1939) buried in the largest mass grave in the country and renewed the “hopes” of relatives, who in dialogue with Télam warned that a victory of the right in the July elections could jeopardize the “advances”.
Early Monday morning, at seven past one, the 128 families who claimed for those who are buried among the 33,846 bodies that lie in the monumental Valle de Cuelgamuros, 54 kilometers from Madrid, received an email in which the Government of Pedro Sánchez informed them that the exhumations were to take place. However, the news had already been given by the press.
“It is a very indelicate way of treating relatives who have been fighting this fight for years,” Emilio Silva, president of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH) told Télam. and grandson of the first genetically identified disappearance of the Francoist repression.
When giving the announcement, the officials of the Government of the Socialist Party (PSOE) recognized something that relatives of victims repeat: they arrive “late”.
The grave, which the late dictator Francisco Franco had built in 1940 after the end of the Civil War, has been “a place of democratic memory” since October 19, 2022, when Spain approved the law that replaced the Historical Memory law. of 2007, and which ordered that the former Valley of the Fallen be renamed Valle de Cuelgamuros.
The first request for exhumation
It was processed through the courts and is that of the brothers Manuel and Antonio Ramiro Lapeña, and is prior to the norm. In 2016 they achieved a historic sentence to recover the bodies. The rest were administrative recognitions.
Despite this sentence, the Francisco Franco Foundation and a private lawyer asked the Justice to stop the work.
In March, the Supreme Court rejected those requests and paved the way for the exhumations.
Most of the Lapeña descendants died, but they live Purification, who is the granddaughter and greatniece respectively of the brothers Manuel and Antonio, both shot in 1936 by the Franco regime.
“I have more hope now, but I am also a little afraid, because there are older relatives who do not have time. And if there is a political change, this would be paralyzed,” Purificación told Télam.
The thousands who lie in the grave are not going to be exhumed, but Each family has to submit a request to National Heritage (which manages the space) and prove that their family member is there.
Silva emphasized that there are years of fighting for “something basic, such as burying a loved one where they want and not where a dictator decides,” and that is that his grandfather, like the thousands of other bodies that were scattered throughout the country, they populated Cuelgamuros at the request of Franco.
As he explained to this agency the President of the State Federation of Forums for Memory (FEFFM), Arturo Peinadothese bodies are of “Republicans murdered in the war and in later years, who were transferred without the permission and knowledge of the families to Franco’s tomb, something like paying homage to the executioner.”
Meanwhile, the grandson of Emilio Silva Faba appreciated the official announcement, but compared it to the exhumation that Franco’s family achieved, which in 2019 carried the dictator with the coffin on his shoulders and to which the relatives “who wanted” could go.
The other exhumed politician was the founder of the Falange, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, in 2023.
“Both started ex officio from the Government, but those of the victims come from the victims,” he told Télam. lawyer for the Lapeña family, Eduardo Ranz.
Purificación commented that he requested permission to attend the exhumations, in which they do not participate.
The fear to politics
Despite the criticism for the delays and methods, the relatives appreciate the progress and they fear that these will be reversed in the event of a change of political sign in July.
The fear is based on the fact that the Popular Party (PP) is the one that is best positioned to win next month’s elections, according to the average number of polls carried out by RTVE and published on Thursday.
He, like his potential ally, the far-right Vox, voted against the 2022 rule and stated that they would repeal it, alleging that it divides and rekindles wounds in society.
This year, appealed to the Constitutional Court to declare it unconstitutional.
“The PP thing is a false fight, because the law is not going to judge any Francoist. It is not going to make a census of executioners, it is going to make one of victims,” said Silva, whose family the Falangists took away their property ” at gunpoint”.
Ranz hopes that the extractions take place “as soon as possible” to compare the DNA and, although he does not believe that “the bodies will be ordered to be reintroduced in Cuelgamuros”, he fears for those who “now make that same request, since they can be affected by the change of government”.
Los interviewees ask not only to maintain the 2022 law, but also to repeal the 1975 Amnesty Law because “it works as a full stop law” and along with other rules “prevent access to justice,” explained the head of the FEFFM.
In that Amnesty Law, key in the democratic transition, lies the idea of reconciliation. It was even in a certain way graphed in Cuelgamuros, where victims and perpetrators were matched.
Another demand from the relatives is the creation of a state agency that endures beyond political ups and downs or that if “the right won, it would have to do a stronger job to eliminate it,” said the head of ARMH.
“The government chose a grant model to search for the disappeared; it distributes resources and families compete among themselves,” Silva criticized, because in the case of a PP and VOX government, it would only be enough to cut or eliminate them, as happened in other governments of previous right.
However, those consulted highlighted the -partial- transition from a model of “private” and extrajudicial exhumations to another in which the State takes charge of them, in a country in which the relatives were in charge of seeking resources and hiring forensics.
“The new Law of Memory assumes the public duty of exhumations and finances it,” Ranz said.
In any case, private exhumations “do not cease to exist, they have been permanent since 2000, when the graves of the Franco regime began to appear,” although “a judge never appeared,” Peinado explained.
The demand for official judges and forensics is common to family members. In addition, the regulation of the standard is still pending.
This week the Government appointed Dolores Delgado as prosecutor of the Democratic Memory and Human Rights room, in accordance with the Memory Law, a new instance for victims.
“In Spain there are many people with a very low democratic and political level. The media and governments did not promote a democratic and political culture,” Purificación said.
For Peinado, the problem of “lack of democratic culture” has to do with the fact that “Francoism was not defeated in the streets” and because “when you see the names of the victims, at the same time, the executioners are being pointed out. And If you see the surnames of many hierarchs of the dictatorship, these are repeated in the conservative forces of Parliament”.
#hope #progress #fear