In this government that governs us poorly, nothing maintains the slightest attachment to reality. Everything is a continuous fabrication, built alongside the threads of truth, which she chokes with the tenacity of a vine.
Only in this way can we understand why the socialists proudly announce the declaration of the old Carabanchel prison as a “place of memory”, in accordance with the law on democratic memory, after another PSOE government was demolished in 2008.
Carabanchel prison was built in the 40s of the last century by the dictatorship. He had political and ordinary prisoners. A total of 202 detainees were executed by the Carabanchel regime, according to the investigation by Manuel García Muñoz collected in his book behind bars.
The prison was demolished under the socialist government Rodriguez Zapaterothe Ministry of the Interior owns the building. That is to say, those who neglected nothing in this prison, with the exception of the prison hospital transformed into an internment center for foreigners, are the same ones who are today trying to rebuild it by decree in the imagination of Spanish society.
This prison replaced the Modelo prison, located in the Argüelles district, demolished after the civil war. During the conflict, La Modelo was a detention center for people whose only crime was, in the vast majority of cases, not being in communion with the Popular Front. There, on August 22, 1936, there was a massacre of prisoners at the hands of the militias, among them notable republicans like Melquiades AlvarezAzaña’s political mentor, who considered resigning from his post as President of the Republic because of these assassinations.
Designed to accommodate 1,200 prisoners, the prison population of La Modelo exceeded 5,000 inmates in November 1936. Before being expelled due to the proximity of the front during the Battle of Madrid, several expeditions left on November 7 and 8, with a thousand prisoners, who were massacred in Paracuellos del Jarama and Torrejón de Ardoz.
Franco demolished the model to build the Air Ministry, today’s headquarters. Sánchez did not think of declaring this space as a “place of memory”. Other former war prisons in Madrid, such as Sales, Porlier either Saint Anthonyprotagonists of the “black expeditions” of 1936, also meet the requirements of article 49 of the Law on Democratic Memory, since they are “events of singular importance due to their historical significance” linked to repression and violence against the population during the Civil War. War.
The declaration of the ancient oriental cemetery, today La Almudena, as a “place of memory” is also planned for remember the nearly 3,000 shots by the winners of the competition, including 80 women, between 1939 and 1944.
There has already been controversy between the government of Manuela Carmena and its commissioner for historical memory for the intention of erecting a monument which would include hundreds of authors. The controversy ultimately led to the dissolution of the commissioner, made up of figures such as Francisca Sauquillo, Amelia Valcárcel, José Álvarez Junco, Octavio Ruiz Manjón and Andrés Trapiello.
As is clear from the commissioner’s minutes, his desire was to avoid “the production of new grievances while trying to avoid others”, which is why he argued that this monument “should include the names of those shot or murdered in Madrid in the period of 1936-39 whose execution took place in this same cemetery where their bodies were deposited there.
Because, in addition to massacres like those of 23 adoring nuns i.e. 53 civil guards, or approximately 20% of the “marches” which took place in the capital during the domination of the populist frontaccording to Javier Cervera in his book Madrid at war.
The Sánchez government’s announcement regarding the declaration of La Almudena as a “place of memory” refers to none of this. In this aspect, it is more of a “place of forgetting”. The leader dictates what must be retained or canceled depending on whether or not this reinforces the legitimization of his power. Pure Francoism.
It is difficult to maintain that from a certain date, April 16, 1939, the day of the first post-war executions, those of Manuel Alcázar Monje and Antonio Sánchez Fraile, the walls of La Almudena were a symbol of barbarism. and intolerance, and that the cancellation of the same shootings and bloodstains of this era serves to promote democratic values.
The third “place of memory” announced is the former General Directorate of Security, at Puerta del Sol, scene of torture and assassinations of detainees under Franco. Paradoxically, one of the last cases of mistreatment occurred in 1983, under the PSOE government: the victim was a police officer, José Manuel Castán Belmonte, who died three months later.
Today it is the seat of the presidency of the Community of Madrid, by decision of a socialist regional president, Joaquin Leguinaformer anti-Franco activist. In the declaration file launched by Sánchez, terrible chapters of the Royal Post in the civil war are also passed over in silence.
Within its four walls, being the Ministry of the Interior, it was decided in August 1936, at the start of the fratricidal conflict, to launch an instrument of terror, the Provincial Commission of Public Inquiry (CPIP), which left Madrid in just three month. littered with thousands of corpses of people considered to be discontented with the Popular Front.
Better known as Checa de Bellas Artes or Fomento, because of its successive headquarters at Círculo de Bellas Artes and 9 rue Fomento, the CPIP coordinated the repressive actions of Czech parties and unions. A study by the CEU Institute of Historical Studies, sponsored by the Zapatero government, counted 345 Czechs in Madrid in 1936, four per square kilometer, including fifty socialists.
The study holds them responsible for more than two thousand murders in the capital.
The Republican Ministry of the Interior, led by the socialist Ángel Galarza since September 1936, promoted the activity of the CPIP with total dedication. To clarify the department’s involvement in the repression to the diplomatic corps and the foreign press, a clandestine Sol delegation was opened at 1 Marqués de Riscal Street, in the Palace of the Counts of Casa Valencia: the so-called First Company Ministry Liaison. of the Interior.
The head of this Czech, Alberto Vázquez Sánchezwent almost daily to the government headquarters in Sol to receive direct orders from Galarza. It was even common for Chekists under his command, they went there to obtain information on people to be arrested, as Javier Cervera points out. At Marqués de Riscal, there were more than two hundred inmates at one time or another. One of them was the Duke of Moctezuma, later assassinated in Aravaca. some of them Chekists They guarded Sol. Several of them accompanied the socialist minister when he fled to Valencia as Franco’s troops approached.
If it truly cared about the victims of violence, whoever their tormentors were, the Sánchez government would strive to ensure that all this horror becomes a reason for shared pity again, without erasing any part of history. It is the inestimable heritage of our parents and our grandparents, who lived and suffered it.
Sánchez decided to squander this long-standing legacy of coexistence for paltry short-term political gains. Because the only thing he seems interested in is setting any lie in stone, and half-truths are half-truths, if he thinks it can help him stay in power.
