The Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, has signed 29 declarations of reparation to people who suffered persecution and violence for political reasons during the dictatorship, as announced in a message on the social network delivered next October 31 at an event in Madrid, they also include the nullity of judicial processes and the illegitimacy of the courts. Among those retaliated against is Miguel Hernández, whose daughter-in-law, Lucía Izquierdo, has been invited to the event through a phone call made by the Secretary of State for Democratic Memory, Fernando Martínez, as confirmed by Joan Pámies, a Hernandian researcher very close to the poet’s family. from Orihuela. This culminates a process initiated by Pàmies in which he requested this institutional declaration, the process of which has been punctuated by controversy. While the city council of Elche, the Provincial Council of Alicante and the Generalitat Valenciana have supported it, in the hometown of the author of Viento del pueblo, Orihuela, it was rejected.
The statement prepared by the specialist in the life and work of the Alicante writer, and signed by Izquierdo, two grandchildren and two great-nephews of Hernández, among others, was presented by registration on July 30 before the Secretary of State commanded by Fernando Martínez. In it, the signatories reviewed the judicial process that sentenced the poet to death, through summaries 21001 and 4407. They assured that “it is objectively demonstrated that the processes followed against Miguel Hernández do not have any legal rigor and the facts attributed in the aforementioned summaries never can be considered crimes, and the death penalty sentenced was based on ideological aspects, opinion or its clear alignment in the defense of the established order and support for the election of the citizens of the Second Republic, as well as the use of its words and writings against the Francoist coup plotters.” They also attributed the death of the Oriolano writer, who died of tuberculosis in Alicante prison, to a “murder by omission”, due to “intentional lack of healthcare”.
On September 26, a motion presented by the socialist Carolina Gracia in the Orihuela City Council turned the town hall into a powder keg. The allusions to the historical context of Miguel Hernández’s last months, from his arrest to his death, bothered the municipal government, formed by a coalition between PP and Vox. The tense debate pitted the opposition, PSOE, Compromís and Ciudadanos, who defended the theses signed by Hernández’s family, against the bench chaired by Mayor José Vegara (PP), whom his Vox partners had demanded the withdrawal of the allusions to the Republic and Francoism. The Councilor for Education, Vicente Pina, defended the poet in what seemed to family members and researchers to be a mere “request for pardon.” In Pàmies’ opinion, Miguel Hernández’s political activism cannot be separated from his verses. “You cannot request the annulment of the trials without explaining” how they were developed, he maintained. The ruling majority rejected the motion. The Kalandraka publishing house, which had published the works recognized in the Ciudad de Orihuela Children’s Poetry Prize since 2008, broke ties days after the contest.
The controversy moved on September 30 to Elche, the city where Josefina Manresa, the poet’s widow, lived and where her descendants continue to live. A similar motion, presented on this occasion by Compromís councilor Esther Díez, forced the mayor, Pablo Ruz (PP), to balance so as not to repeat the Oriola catastrophe and, at the same time, not create discontent among his government partners. , also from Vox. This party, represented by councilor Aurora Rodil, even tried to equate the trials of Miguel Hernández, José Antonio Primo de Rivera and Federico García Lorca in the motion, who was shot without any trial. The proposal from the Abascal party was rejected, but the request to the central government for a declaration like the one signed by Ángel Víctor Torres was supported, since the PP abstained. Perhaps it weighed on the popular people’s minds that Ruz, in a previous stage when he served as Councilor for Culture, did not know how to stop the march of Miguel Hernández’s legacy, which Elche treasured, to Quesada (Jaén), Josefina Manresa’s hometown.
The municipal plenary sessions, especially that of Orihuela and its rejection of the motion, resonated throughout the planet. “I received an enormous number of messages from researchers and those interested in the poet’s work,” says Pàmies, “in which they told me that they could not explain how Orihuela had refused to support” its most famous and renowned neighbor. The comments came “from the United States, Puerto Rico, Russia, all of Latin America, France, Italy or Spain.” The position of the popular people surprised everyone. “Miguel Hernández’s literature is linked to his life, it affirms his ideals and his way of thinking.” It is impossible to avoid his political stance, in his opinion. Even Gonzalo Montoya, Councilor for Culture in Orihuela, and Rodil from Elche defended his verses. Even Abascal recited the verses from I Call for Youth on one occasion without quoting him, at a campaign event held in 2019 in Madrid. “His poetry is simple, people understand it and like it even on the right,” Pàmies continues. “Although some do not wonder about the context in which the Onion Lullabies or The Deserted Beaches were written,” he says.
This universality of the Orihuela poet was assumed by the president of the Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, who on Tuesday, October 1, stated that the plenary session of the Consell, the Valencian autonomous government, had approved a motion identical to the one proposed by the PP in Orihuela, that is That is, without historical references, so that the ministry would institutionally declare the reparation and recovery of the figure of Hernández, marking the step of his party, which in the Valencian Cortes no longer has Vox as partners, although they do need it to carry out their initiatives. On the 3rd, the Alicante Provincial Council, with the popular Toni Pérez at its head, voted in favor of the historicist motion drafted by Pàmies, with the yes of PP, PSOE and Compromís and a single negative vote, that of Vox. And despite Torres’ signature, the PSPV continues “with the roadmap” of presenting institutional support from the Valencian Cortes, with the Non-Law Proposition (PNL) formula, to “put Mazón in front of its mirror: “We want you to recognize that Miguel Hernández was condemned by the Franco regime for his support of the Republic,” comment socialist sources. The controversy that does not stop.
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