In Elche, the city that is home to the Miguel Hernández University and the airport of the same name as the poet, the municipal plenary session was able to approve a motion asking the government to overturn the Francoist convictions that condemned the poet. This approval was due to the PP, which abstained and therefore retreated from the position it had last week precisely in Orihuela, the hometown of Miguel Hernández, where this proposal, promoted by the poet’s family , could not be approved due to its rejection as well as that of the far right of Vox.
In the case of Elche, the proposal was presented in plenary session by Compromís, who defended the motion by claiming that Miguel Hernández had been condemned after the civil war by the Franco dictatorship “for having thought and written”. The coalition’s municipal spokesperson, Esther Díaz, emphasized that “the poems of Miguel Hernández cannot be understood without his ideology” and declared that “there are no half measures here.”
The motion was supported by Compromís and by the PSPV, while it received the no from Vox, but the abstention of the PP allowed this proposal to advance within the Elche City Council.
The “buts” of the right
The abstention of the PP did not allow us to escape the reproaches or the speeches which assimilated the Franco dictatorship to the Second Spanish Republic.
The popular mayor, Pablo Ruz, – who wanted to recall that he is a history professor by profession -, in connection with the Law of Concord promoted by PP and Vox in the Corts, underlined that “this government has condemned the assassinations from the year 31 (year of proclamation of the Second Republic) until 39 and beyond”, to then assert that the Republic was “disastrous” and “illegitimate”, although it was proclaimed after elections.
However, Ruz warned that “establishing a moral vision of what happened from 36 to 39 is very dangerous, the war was terrible, in the war we killed each other, on both sides there were reasons, There were murderers on both sides. and both parties had to apologize.
For her part, Vox spokesperson Aurora Rodil tried to amend the compromise proposal to include an equation between the death of Miguel Hernández and that of the founder of the Falange, José Antonio Primo de Rivera (executed in the prison of Alicante during the Civil War), as well as that of the poet Federico García Lorca (executed by Franco’s repression during the conflict). For the far right, they were all “innocent victims” and they defended Primo de Rivera by assuring that he had only founded “a political party, he was a civilian”.
Compromís rejected Vox’s amendment, saying that “fascism is not comparable to democracy”, while criticizing Mayor Ruz for his “equidistance” between Francoism and the Republic.
