The Franco symbols that survives in some streets and monuments in Madrid opened a new political gap in the Spanish capital after the City Council has approved and then suspended the elimination of the vestiges related to the dictatorship.
Now Madrid – group of citizens movements and leftist governing the city – began to remove the monuments on 29 January and expected to continue over the next six months, in addition renaming thirty streets and plazas linked to the dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939-1975).
This measure was aimed at the implementation of the Law of Historical Memory, promoted in 2007 by the Socialist government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and tries to recognize the abuses and crimes of war Spanish civil and the Franco dictatorship.
What it does vary is the name of the streets, to be regulated by a municipal order, which provides that requests for change of name was approved in the various districts and rise the municipal plenary.
In 1980, five years after the death of dictator Francisco Franco, mayor of Madrid at the time, Enrique Tierno Galvan (Socialist), and made the first changes in names streets.
“In a democratic society the values to be used in public spaces are those that strengthen coexistence and herding up to agreements among its citizens,” said Efe President the Association of Social and Democratic Memory (Amesde), Jaime Ruiz.
To do this, remember that there are two types of representations raised during the Franco regime: those considered a “tribute to barbarism” and other monuments of historical-artistic protected by law.
The latter works have to be modified and contain plaques to remember and explain “why there is this monument and therefore the new generations understand it,” says Ruiz.
In this also coincides Professor of History at the Complutense University of Madrid, Gutmaro Gomez, who assured Efe that “everything that has monumental category should be explained historically and artistically respected” .
The removal of Francoist monuments were approved in the municipal plenary on 22 December, only with the opposition Popular Party in the capital (center right).
Although the head of Culture Department, Celia Mayer, justified the measure and argued that the monuments honoring “the coup instigators and perpetrators of crimes against humanity” during the Franco , PP voices are protesting after symbols that, in his view, were not breaching the law be withdrawn.
the Popular Party, which ruled the capital between 1991 and 2015, has called for the resignation of Mayer and his deputy spokesman in the city of Madrid, Iñigo Henríquez de Luna, he said the controversy left the delegate of Culture “completely unauthorized”.
After the controversy, the Madrid City Council will develop a municipal regulations to implement properly the Law of Historical Memory, which will be presented in April by the Integral Plan Memory of Madrid , which is conducting the Department of Historical Memory of the Complutense University of the capital.
“There is a sector of our society that does not assimilate that can not be Franco and democratic at the same time. Democracy and Franco are incompatible,” says Ruiz.
The president of the association considers public spaces “recognition of citizenship to those who provided positive coexistence factors” as explorers, artists and benefactors, among others.
Professor Gomez also added that new monuments or streets that are created should be dedicated to “those figures or symbols that represent constitutional values.”
On this issue, the Madrid town hall and reached an agreement in late January to change the names of some streets with names of victims of terrorism.
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