The Spanish government is preparing to “extinguish” the Francisco Franco Foundation in compliance with the Democratic Memory Law, considering that this entity is an apology for the dictatorship, as announced this Friday in Fuerteventura by the minister Angel Victor Torres.
“The law clearly states that there are no foundations that glorify people, groups or associations that defended the Franco regime, that They defended totalitarianism and dictatorship. The Francisco Franco Foundation therefore in no way falls into this category. And what will be done is to extinguish it,” the Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory told journalists.
Angel Víctor Torres made this announcement during his visit to one of the symbols of the dictatorship’s repression, the agricultural penal colony of Tefía, in Fuerteventurawhere the regime that governed Spain from 1936 to 1975 confined people from the LGTBI community for years solely because of their sexual condition.
[La Fundación Franco se podrá cerrar si sus actividades “humillan a las víctimas” de la dictadura]
The head of Democratic Memory clarified that this is not the responsibility of his ministry, but of that of Culture, in whose register the Foundation is located, but they have also already discussed this issue with the minister. Ernest Urtasunwho “knows well the steps to take”.
“Therefore, any foundation or association that defends the dictator or those who made him apology for dictatorshipmust be eliminated from democracy, but this is not new: it is typical of the Democratic Memory Law and international law, it is typical of the United Nations conventions, its agreements and its resolutions in favor of human rights,” he argued.
Torres added that, for this reason, “it is saddened that there are communities, like Aragon (governed by PP and Vox), that repeal their law on democratic memory” and also eliminate the provision that paid tribute to citizens Spaniards in this region. . who died in Nazi concentration camps during the World War II.
“This no longer just goes against a Spanish law, it goes against international law, which clearly says that these extermination camps were heinous camps and, therefore, there is an obligation to protect families and people who have been victims. Because absolutely all human rights have been violated there,” he continued.
According to him, it makes no sense that at this stage there are those who “try to suppress the places of memory or do not want to put the graves on the map” of the Republicans who suffered reprisals from the Franco regime.
Torres recalled that in the town hall of which he was mayor, Arucas (Gran Canaria), two wells were dug where, in 1936, several dozen people murdered by the rebels and who until then were considered missing were thrown, and stressed that this was done with the support of the institutions chaired by politicians from different sides (PSOE in the Consistory, PP in the Cabildo and Canarian Coalition in the Autonomous Government).
“It’s an example for the rest of the communities, when some are ready, for example, to equalize income. 40 years of dictatorship with the years of the Second Republic. And they are not the same,” he added.
Taking advantage of the fact that he was in a place of reference for the LGTBI collective, the minister recalled that under the Republic “homosexuals were free, equal, with rights to love identical to heterosexuals and the dictatorship segregated them, marginalized them, separated them. took them out, turned them into almost people for the rest of society to persecute.
