The PP, with the beginning of the new political path after the summer period, took the first step to repeal the Law of Historical and Democratic Memory of Cantabria approved in the last legislature by the bipartisan RPC-PSOE government. And it did so by presenting a bill in the regional Parliament a few days after Vox pressured it to comply with the agreement to repeal the rule reached by both parties a year ago.
For the popular, overturning this law “is good for coexistence and healthy for democracy.” “It is above all an initiative of democratic hygiene; the healthiest thing is to repeal it, because of the way it was done and also because of what it contains,” said the regional deputy and regional senator, Íñigo Fernández (PP), in a statement on Thursday.
The Cantabrian PP, following the line of this formation in other territories where it has been in favour of replacing memorial laws with what it calls “concord”, equates the victims of the civil war and Francoism with their executioners, stressing that “you cannot distinguish between first and second class victims according to their ideological affiliation.
For Fernández, both what his party calls the “Truth Commission” and “the imposition of a manipulated history with omissions, indoctrination in classrooms, subsidies with public money to certain associations or the creation of different categories of victims. According to their ideology, they have no way of registering in a minimum social consensus.
The PP calls the collegiate body actually called the Memory Commission the “Truth Commission”, whose objectives, as stated in the law itself, are “the recognition of victims; promoting reconciliation and peace; serving as an instrument to uncover the facts that remain hidden about abuses, violations of rights and disappearances; commemorating and mourning the victims of political repression; and preserving documentary evidence that serves to commemorate and remember historical events to prevent them from happening again.
“In a democratic society of the 21st century, there cannot be a ‘Truth Commission’ in which five members appointed by the government prepare a narrative of what happened 85 years ago and force the whole of society to accept it, including the investigators; impose fines and sanctions on those who defend different points of view; design a subject to be taught in schools without the help of teachers; which establishes differences between those who suffered violence and political repression during the Second Republic and the Civil War, distinguishing the first and second victims according to their ideological affiliation,” the popular parliamentarian argued.
The truth is that, according to the norm, the five members are not chosen by the Government. Two are elected by the Regional Executive, while the other three are chosen by the Parliament of Cantabria on the proposal of the parliamentary groups.
According to Fernández, the work of the Memory Commission “is typical of a communist dictatorship, but not of a European and democratic society.” “It is enough to divide society and confront people all day long, as if this country did not have more serious and urgent problems to solve,” he insisted.
Exhumation work
For the PP, the socialists “imposed the law of historical memory on the entire Cantabrian society” in 2021 “without listening to anyone and without dialoguing with anyone”. In this sense, the Popular Party, in its alternative proposal, undertakes to maintain the support of the Government of Cantabria “for all procedures for locating or exhuming the remains requested by the relatives of the victims” and, to this end, it expressly refers to what is regulated by the Law on Historical Heritage of Cantabria.
“No one is deprived of this right,” stressed Fernández, who clarified that at present “there is no open procedure because there is not a single application on the table.” The truth is that the PP, when it came to government a year ago, paralyzed the ongoing exploration in four wells, although it announced that it would continue the work.
As for the custody of the documentary material, “it is guaranteed,” according to the PP text, referring to the provisions of the Cantabrian Law on Archives and Libraries. “The documentation will be protected and investigators will be able to work with a freedom that the law denies them, that is, without anyone telling them what the final result of their investigations should be,” said the popular parliamentarian.
Finally, Fernández assured that the repeal of this norm “will generate much more consensus than its approval, because it is based on common sense and respect for coexistence and not on imposition and sectarianism.” In the same sense, he reiterated that Spain and Cantabria “have much greater challenges today than dedicating the political debate to some imposing on others a history of what happened 85 years ago with the sole aim of dividing and confronting society.”
PSOE demands that PP “stop its offensive”
In accordance with the bill presented by the Popular Party to repeal the current regulation, the PSOE was critical and demanded this Thursday that the party led by the regional president, María José Sáenz de Buruaga, “stop its offensive to repeal” a law that was approved “to restore the dignity and memory of the victims and close the wounds that are still open.” “It is a direct attack on our rights,” criticized the socialist deputy Mario Iglesias, announcing that the PSOE would promote measures to prevent the repeal of the law.
Likewise, he demanded explanations from the Minister of Culture for having “completely paralyzed the exhumation campaign.” “The PP and its traveling companion, Vox, have always had memory problems, they forget that in Spain there was a dictatorship and a civil war that left many lives buried in ditches and ditches,” said Iglesias.
In addition, he warned Buruaga that “do not forget that we have a national law on historical memory, which your government has the obligation to respect and it does not do so.” For the socialist deputy, the current standard “is reconciliation, justice, truth and reparation; and this allows families who have lost a loved one and do not know where their challenges are to know.
After the agreement reached a year ago between the PP and the far-right Vox to repeal this regulation, the so-called Memory and Democracy Platform of Cantabria emerged in the Community, made up of almost a hundred organizations and under the motto “without memory there is no future”. Since then, its members have carried out various protest actions, such as rallies, demonstrations and the so-called “memory routes”. In addition, they have given PP deputies in the regional parliament a “basic introduction” to historical and democratic memory to try to persuade them to overturn the law.
