Sánchez announces ‘international offensive’ against opposition over civil war victims law

7 months ago 25

The Spanish government will launch a major international “offensive” against three regional governments ruled by the Spanish People’s Party (Partido Popular/EPP) and the far-right VOX party for having repealed several laws aimed at honouring the memory of the Spanish Civil War, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez (PSOE/S&D) announced Thursday.

The aim is to take these cases to the European Parliament, the UN and the Council of Europe after the governments of Aragon, the Valencian Community and Castilla y León repealed the state regulation on “democratic memory” and replaced it with controversial “ad hoc” regulations, Euractiv’s partner EFE reported.

According to official sources, the Law of Democratic Memory, approved in October 2022, seeks to promote knowledge of the democratic phases of Spanish history and preserve the memory of the victims of the Civil War (1936-1939) and the Franco dictatorship (1939-1975) through initiatives such as a victims’ census or the removal of symbols of the dictatorship from public places.

In this sense, one of the most symbolic actions taken so far by Sánchez’s executive was the exhumation of Franco’s remains from his tomb in the so-called Valley of the Fallen (Valle de los Caídos), a large mausoleum 60 kilometres from Madrid, in October 2019.

Government sources reported Thursday that the progressive executive of Sanchez’s PSOE and the left-wing platform Sumar would take the repeal of the rule by the PP-VOX governments to the Spanish Constitutional Court, to the UN Special Rapporteur on Truth, Justice and Reparation and before the UN body’s Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions.

Madrid wants these international bodies to see whether the measures taken by the regional governments are in line with “international best practices and the international commitments made by Spain in the field of human rights”.

Sanchez’s government also wants to have its EU group, the Socialists and Democrats (S&D), push for a plenary debate in the European Parliament.

In addition, the government said it would contact the Council of Europe to warn it of the “possible violation of several provisions of the Convention on Human Rights” by the PP and VOX governments, inform the Secretary General of the Council of Europe and its Commissioner for Human Rights of the “seriousness of the situation” and request an independent report on the situation of “democratic memory in Spain”.

On 15 February, Aragón became the first Spanish region to repeal a law on democratic memory with the support of the three groups that form part of the government: PP, VOX and the regional PAR party.

Meanwhile, on 21 March, the PP and VOX submitted a proposal for a “concord” law in the Valencian Community, where they govern in coalition, to replace the current regional norm on “democratic memory”, which, according to VOX, will eliminate “civil war terms” while maintaining reparations for all victims of the Spanish Civil War.

In the same vein, on 26 March, the two parties that also govern the region of Castilla y León together presented a proposal for a “law of concord” to replace the current regional decree on “democratic memory”.

The new law does not explicitly condemn the violence that took place between the Civil War and the approval of the Spanish Constitution in 1978 and removes the word “dictatorship” to refer only to the period between 1939 and the start of the Iberian country’s democratic transition (1975-76) as “Francoism” (Franquismo).

(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.Euractiv.es)