The far-right party Vox, a partner of the PP in the Castellón City Council, wants to eliminate from the city street map the names of a square and five streets, dedicated to the Valencian Country, to the writers Joan Fuster and Isabel-Clara Simó, and to the teacher Republican and activist Empar Navarro. The spokesperson for the ultra formation in the council and Councilor for Citizen Security, Antonio Ortolá, has announced that he will begin the procedures to withdraw and replace up to six nomenclatures, three of them due to their “pan-Catalanist” status.
The names that Vox has put on its target are those of the central Plaza del País Valencià, whose name is, in the opinion of the councilor, “a serious attack against our history”, and that of the Sueca writer and essayist Joan Fuster (1922- 1992) “for being a key figure of pan-Catalanism and promoter of the term Països Catalans.” Along the same lines, he adds the veto to the street in memory of the Alcoi journalist and writer Isabel-Clara Simó (1943-2020), whom Ortolá adjectives as “separatist and Catalanist.”
“We want to be a containment dam for the pan-Catalan policies that Compromís and PSPV have allowed during all these years,” they have indicated since the formation in reference to Fadrell’s two government mandates in the capital’s town hall.
Fuster is one of the most important writers and essayists in the Catalan linguistic field of the 20th century, as experts once again attested in the numerous conferences and events organized in 2022, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth. Simó was one of the best-selling writers in the native language. The term Valencian Country appears mentioned in the preamble of the Statute of Autonomy: “Once the Spanish Constitution was approved, it was, within its framework, where the Valencian tradition coming from the historic Kingdom of Valencia met the modern conception of the Valencian Country and gave rise to the Valencian autonomy, as an integrator of the two currents of opinion that frame everything that is Valencian in its own cultural concept in the strict geographical framework that it reaches.
Precisely, the streets Joan Fuster, Isabel-Clara Simó and another of those questioned now, the one dedicated to Empar Navarro, were incorporated by this same PSPV-Compromís coalition in compliance with the Democratic Memory Law, replacing the names of part of the Francoist street map . The three replaced the vials Ángel Sánchez Gozalbo, local secretary of Falange and former president of the Official College of Physicians, a position from which he participated in the purge of the province’s doctors, according to a report by the Grup per la Recerca de la Mòria Historia; that of Herrero Tejedor, national advisor of the Movement; and that of Santos Vivanco, a volunteer officer in the Blue Division and decorated by the Franco regime with the Military Medal in December 1940 and with the Iron Cross of the army of Nazi Germany in May 1942.
Ortolá assures that the current name of the aforementioned Plaza del País Valencià “seriously attacks our history and is a degrading and partisan invention, because the Valencian Community has never been called ‘country’ in its entire history,” he indicated. “Vox has arrived to stop pan-Catalanism and return pride and identity to Valencians. Saying that we are País Valencià does not correspond to the historical or social reality and is to recognize that we belong to the Catalan Countries and that one day we will want independence. However, Castellón and the Valencian Community cannot be conceived without Spain and vice versa.”
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The far-right party adds to its intention to remove Empar Navarro, a republican teacher, pioneer in the teaching of Valencian, pedagogue, feminist and activist during the Civil War, “because she was a communist activist who was a member of the editorial board of Magazine Passionflower”says Ortolá.
In addition, he wants to rename, with his unique version in Spanish, the streets Pare Ricardo (for Father Ricardo) and the one dedicated to the painter Francesc Vidal Serrulla (for Francisco Vidal Serrulla) to “recover the names with which they were called all their lives.” .
“The left has finished the party they had going on with their separatist partners in Catalonia; We Castellón residents do not want unity with Catalonia, neither physical nor linguistic. The only unity we want is that of Spain. Faced with their Catalan delusions, we are not going to take even a step back and the announcement of the start of procedures for this name change is the first proof of this,” he noted.
sectarian battle
In this regard, from Compromís, its municipal spokesperson, Ignasi Garcia, remembers that the changes in the street map are not the responsibility of the council headed by Ortolá, but rather correspond to the area of Culture, in the hands of the PP. “It remains to be seen how far he will consent. [el PP] to Vox” to materialize “this ideological and identity announcement” that, in Garcia’s opinion, is behind this “symbolic and sectarian battle” driven by the formation of the extreme right.
Ignasi Garcia also highlights that the term País Valencià “is part of our Statute” and ignoring this “is an attack against our history.” He adds that the rest of the streets under the Vox spotlight pay tribute to “people who fought to defend democracy and protect rights and social advances.”
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