None of the leaders of the four most voted Spanish parties in elections on June 26 was born to the Civil War (1936-1939). Only one of them, the prime minister and leader of the Popular Party Mariano Rajoy, who was born in 1955, lived the postwar years. The socialist Pedro Sanchez was born in 1972, in the final years of the Franco regime (1939-1975). Instead the leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias and Citizens, Albert Rivera, did when Francisco Franco was history and Spain built their democracy: Iglesias was born in October 1978, two months before the entry into exercise the new Constitution the country, and Rivera, in November 1979, eight months after those first elections in a democracy.
However, all of them and much of the Spanish political scene has developed, in one way or another under the influences of the Civil War, whose start now met 80 years. Many grandparents and / or their parents lived those years and only in the last period seems, somehow, leaving behind the tragic past. Like it or not, the emergence of two formations as we and Citizens and the end of bipartisanship is a break with the transition and the first democratic decades, both marked by the trauma of war and dictatorship (which had in the coup attempt 1981 most convincing his show). However, it is difficult to separate the legacies of the past with up to now- radical refusal of the major parties (PP and PSOE) to negotiate and enable a broad alliance of government, “the German”.
” I think it is much of Franco “in today’s Spain, considering that in that country” could not make the backwash brain “, as was done in Germany, Italy and Japan, for the defeat of their respective fascism by foreign armies “where yes” was a process of denazification “he told La Tercera British Spanish scholar Paul Preston last year, author of books on the Civil War, an acclaimed biography of Franco and another from King Juan Carlos.
in order to advance democracy, political transition Spanish-led by Adolfo Suarez, but with the support of King Juan Carlos and even the communist Santiago Carrillo decided not to focus on outstanding accounts of the past, ie in the crimes during war and dictatorship, to advance democracy. During the first years of democracy a series of decrees and laws to try to compensate for the hardships and suffering of members of the Republican side during the war (the Franco dictatorship investigated and severely condemned the crimes committed in the Republican zone) or approved the prison in the Franco era. But none of seeking responsible for those crimes.
“It was the best possible transition in those circumstances. People who today begins to complain about the transition forget the context in which it was made. Because when Franco died, Spain had a military whose priority was to defend Spain not the external enemy, which is its normal function, but the enemy within course, ie, the left, the Democrats, “said Preston.
during the socialist government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero (2004-2011), in 2007 the so-called Law of Historical Memory, which he recognized as unfair political trials during the Franco regime was approved, established aid for victims of repression, bet by finding mass graves of those years, established the removal of Francoist symbols of buildings and public spaces, the depoliticization of the Valley of the Fallen (where the tomb of Franco is in addition to some 30,000 fighters of the Civil War) was ordered and granted Spanish nationality to the internationalist brigades and the children and grandchildren of Spanish exiles.
with this, and with no little criticism of both sectors, a series of removals of statues and plaques Franco began and referred to their period, and start excavations occurred throughout the country in search of the remains of people killed in the Civil War and during the dictatorship.
Preston disagreed with that historical revisionism to take statue and Franco plates, to the point of considering it as a missed opportunity. “What I think should have been done was not take that as if it had not happened, but use all of it as an educational tool. That is, the “Street General Yagüe” responsible for the killing of Badajoz, he would have put a plate underneath read “The person responsible for the massacre of Badajoz”, rather than remove the name and put, for example, Nelson Mandela, “he said.
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