The PP confirmed on Monday that it will vote in favour of repealing the law on democratic memory of the Balearic Islands, as revealed by the deputy spokesperson of the parliamentary group, Marga Durán, at a press conference. This was one of the points that remained pending after Santiago Abascal broke the agreement signed by PP and Vox in the Islands.
Durán, who claims that Vox has “unilaterally” broken the governance pact, explained that his party’s concern if the Balearic regulation were repealed “was that there would be something pending that was not included in the serious law – another regional norm – or in the State Memory Law”, but, after seeing that the national law includes these issues, they consider that it is not necessary to present any amendment in this regard.
Just three days ago, government spokesman Antoni Costa (PP) indicated that his party would negotiate “when the time comes” the repeal of the Democratic Memory Law. Costa himself acknowledged that the PP government’s program did not foresee the abolition of this law and that currently the conservatives do not have the commitment they had before the rupture of the pact with Vox.
In June, the Autonomous Chamber considered the proposal promoted by Vox to repeal, with the support of the PP, the Law of Memory and Democratic Recognition, approved in the first legislature of the socialist Francina Armengol. The plenary session took place in great political tension after Gabriel Le Senne (Vox), president of the Parliament, destroyed a portrait of Aurora Picornell, symbol of the antifascist struggle and shot by the putschists.
An initiative by Vox
It was Vox who submitted a few months ago to the Balearic Parliament its proposal to repeal the Law of Democratic Memory and Recognition of the Balearic Islands, better known as the Law of Democratic Memory, approved in 2018. The abolition of this regulation was included in the legislative agreement (already broken) reached between the PP and the extreme right, by which those of Santiago Abascal committed themselves to abstaining from the investiture of the popular Marga Prohens as President of the Government, as ended up happening.
In the Balearic Islands, among the allegations presented by the ultra party in the document presented to the House, he criticized the fact that the law “undermines the equality of all Spaniards”, given that, according to him, “it violates article 14. [de la Constitución] This serves as a key to fundamental rights. “This law aims to discriminate and separate a part of the Spanish people based on their opinion, personal, social or historical circumstances, such as the side they fought for.”
According to Vox, this circumstance “fosters resentment and prevents the recognition of all those who, at some point in history and for various reasons, shed their blood for Spain, regardless of their side.” In its text, the party has once again wrongly interpreted historical memory as an attempt to “divide the Spanish,” instead of valuing it as a tool to repair the wounds caused by the fascist coup of 1936, the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship.
Those of Abascal argued that the regulation represents a “clear violation” of the right to ideological freedom and thought recognized in Article 16 of the Magna Carta, because “it allows nothing more than an official history, pursuing the right to dissent.” “The convictions of individuals cannot be normatively fixed nor their public manifestation prevented,” they added, in agreement with the above, stressing that “laws designed to rewrite history to the taste of a party have never been a stimulus for peace,” democracy or fundamental rights.
In the explanatory statement of the bill, the far-right party also argued that this regulation “does not pursue the values of freedom, respect and tolerance that promoted the Transition, by decreeing the interference of the State in the sphere of conscience of the Spaniards”, shapes their individual memory, prevents freedom of opinion, limits academic freedom and penalizes the work of historians if it does not conform to the sectarian and selfish interpretation of historical events made by certain political parties.
The text, on the other hand, places the beginning of the “convulsions” that led to the outbreak of the civil war with the proclamation of the Second Republic in 1931. These “convulsions,” they emphasize, “already foreshadowed the climate of the civil war.” social instability, institutional crisis and exclusion of the adversary that would characterize its different governments. Vox presented “what happened in Spain between 1931 and 1945” in a generalized European context “animated by ideological passions, the brutalization of politics and the dehumanization of the other.”
He also adds that between 1931 and 1936 “public conversation exploded.” “The coercive capacity of the State collapsed, the rules of the game were broken and in the streets there was an incessant spiral of violence that ended up poisoning coexistence and blowing up the bridges that still united many Spaniards,” they said.
The importance of this law
The Balearic Democratic Memory Act allowed public institutions to investigate and clarify the facts related to rights violations during the civil war and the dictatorship, as well as to delimit the consideration of victims – social, professional or cultural organizations, political parties, trade unions, Masonic lodges, feminist or LGTBI movements, victims of bombings, stolen babies, etc. – with the aim of identifying them through a census of victims of the civil war and the Franco dictatorship. Under the protection of this regulation, the nullity of all convictions and resolutions in criminal, civil and administrative cases issued for political reasons on the islands was also declared null and void.
Likewise, in a pioneering initiative at the state level, more than 800 objects (preserved clothing items: buttons, buckles, zippers, remains of shoes, also toiletries) belonging to the victims were recovered, mainly from the graves of the son. Coletes Cemetery, in Manacor, and the Porreres Cemetery, and restore them to return them to their families. Some relatives chose to transfer the objects to the Sections of the Museum of Democratic Memory created under this regulation.
In this regard, the law has allowed the establishment of a Direct Care Office for victims of the Civil War and Francoism and their families. This is also a pioneering initiative in Spain. Likewise, a new figure of protection has been created in the Balearic Islands: the Spaces and Routes of Memory and Democratic Recognition. It has also allowed the declaration of October 29 as a symbolic date of memory and the vindication of democratic values and the struggle for freedom, as well as the preparation of a census of Francoist symbols, legends and mentions that have had to be removed by public institutions.
