Orihuela, the hometown of Miguel Hernández, will not officially ask for the annulment of the trials to which the Franco regime subjected the poet after the civil war and which led him to die in prison at the age of 32. This was possible after PP and Vox rejected the motion presented by the PSOE in which it was requested that the plenary session approve an institutional declaration to provide support to the family which, this summer, in collaboration with entities and groups cultural and defenders of historical memory, promoted an initiative that asks the government to cancel the trials during the dictatorship and recognize his figure.
The proposal recalls that Miguel Hernández was sentenced to two death sentences, a sentence which was commuted to a total of 30 years in prison; These summaries – according to experts – lacked legal rigor and ultimately the poet died of tuberculosis due to lack of medical care in Alicante prison in 1942. We also note that “he was a fervent defender of the Second Republic and the freedoms that “she represented”, and that for this reason he suffered from “Francoist repression”.
Cambiemos Orihuela gave his support to the proposal, saying that “we are trying to provide justice and reparation for the inhumane treatment he suffered under the Franco dictatorship”, and added that “we cannot hide his political past” . From Ciudadanos, they defended the declaration, ensuring that it did “justice”.
Vox claimed to share the figure of Miguel Hernández as a poet, but criticized “the allegation to the Republic” and described his death as “murder”. For its part, the PP justified its rejection by claiming that it had an alternative proposal that basically demanded the same cancellation, but without any reference to Hernández’s defense of the Second Democratic Republic, nor to the Franco dictatorship that condemned him. For the most popular, it was a “healthy proposal, free of any unnecessary political connotation”.
On the PSOE side, its spokesperson Carolina Gracia accused PP and Vox of wanting to “victimize themselves” and of not having contacted the family. He thus criticizes the PP for “not being able to bear having to whitewash a text in order to govern with the extreme right”.
Mayor José Vegara (PP) concluded the debate by accusing the socialists of “continuing to use Miguel Hernández as a tool of polarization instead of a meeting point”, and concluded by emphasizing that “if the proposal made had been negotiated. Today we would vote Yes. Today we voted yes to Miguel Hernández and we voted no to the intransigence of the Socialist Party.”
Finally, the 10 councilors of the PP and the 4 of Vox voted against the institutional declaration, while the 6 of the PSOE, the 3 of Ciudadanos and the 2 of Cambiemos Orihuela maintained their support.
