Their lives were cut short by war, prison, exile or death and their stories erased and hidden, but their names were heard this Tuesday at the National Music Auditorium in a high-level event. The Government has honored twenty victims of the Civil War and Franco’s regime, who have received declarations of reparation that officially recognize that they were victims half a century after Franco’s death.
He did so on the occasion of the day in honor of the victims that the Democratic Memory Law sets for October 31 but which had to be postponed by DANA. The event has been used by Pedro Sánchez to announce that in 2025 the Executive will deploy a whole battery of actions to commemorate the 50 years since the dictator died in 1975. The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz-Ayuso, has already announced that she will not join “any event.”
The president and the Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, have been in charge of delivering the declarations of recognition one by one, which in practice is a document that admits that they were persecuted and violated people and, in the case after they were convicted, stipulates that the sentences were null and void. The Government has already delivered more than 600 of these – the victims or their families can request them – but today among the twenty honorees there were very illustrious figures from different fields.
The poet, the Nobel Prize winner and the militiawoman
Also anonymous men and women who were harshly retaliated against, some of whom themselves received the statement to applause. Others, those who are no longer here, have been present through their descendants and relatives, who in many cases have spent a good part of their lives honoring them or searching for their remains until they are exhumed from graves and gutters. Lucía Izquierdo, daughter-in-law of Miguel Hernandezwho spoke on behalf of all the victims: “We can vigil over his grave, but those who are in the ditches have no one to bring them flowers.”
Izquierdo has collected the declaration of reparation to the Alicante poet, in which it is specified that the summary 21001 carried out in Madrid against the author of the Onion lullabies is null. The process ended in a conviction by Permanent War Council No. 5, the death penalty for a crime of adhering to the rebellion and the punishment would later be commuted to 30 years in prison. But the poet would never be able to fulfill them because he would die locked in prison on March 28, 1942 after having gone through a repressive journey that led him to be in 12 prisons in difficult conditions.
The family has also received a declaration of reparation, specifically his son. Ángeles Flórez Peónknown as Maricuela. PSOE militant until his death last May, aged 105, Maricuela She enlisted as a Republican militiaman and after serving on the Oviedo and Gijón fronts, she would be arrested on November 7, 1937. Shortly after, she was sentenced for “aid to the rebellion” to 15 years in prison, later reduced to nine and of which He would serve four years in the Saturrarán prison (Guipúzcoa).
Vicente Aleixandreone of the most prominent poets of the Generation of ’27 and Nobel Prize winner in Literature in 1977, is also among those honored and his statement is already in the hands of his niece. During the dictatorship, Aleixandre did not go into exile from the country like many other intellectuals and writers did, but he lived what has been called “an internal exile.” The decision to include the poet in the event has not been without controversy and the Ayuso Executive has charged against the Government of Pedro Sánchez for what it considers “a tortuous attempt to politicize his figure.”
Aleixandre was deeply affected by the execution of Federico García Lorca and Miguel Hernández, whose widow, Josefina Manresa, he helped financially. According to Lucía Izquierdo, Aleixandre raised the money –2,500 pesetas– to pay for the poet’s burial so that Josefina could say goodbye and bury him with dignity. “Without Aleixandre he would not have been buried where he is, he would have gone to a grave or ossuary, that was his destiny,” stated his daughter-in-law.
The young anti-Francoist, the philosopher and the father of the Andalusian homeland
Margot has collected her brother’s statement Enrique Ruano. The young law student, a member of the Popular Liberation Front, was arrested and transferred to the General Security Directorate of Puerta del Sol – today the headquarters of the autonomous Government – where he would be tortured. He died on January 20, 1969 in the custody of the Political-Social Brigade and that same day the Francoist propaganda machinery would begin to launch the official version that he had committed suicide. However, those around him never believed it. In 1989 the police officers who guarded him sat in the dock, they were acquitted of the crime of murder due to lack of evidence, but the sentence questioned the thesis of suicide.
The philosopher Maria Zambranoone of the members of Las Sinsombrero, the forgotten writers of the Generation of ’27, whose figures were recently recovered, has been another of those honored. He was at Puerta del Sol in the celebration of the proclamation of the Second Republic and later joined the Pedagogical Missions. She went into exile after the Civil War to Paris, New York and Havana and ended up settling in Mexico, from where she returned in 1984. At the end of her life she was recognized and received the Miguel de Cervantes for Literature in 1988.
Blas Infante Pérez from Vargas He was an Andalusian politician known as the father of the Andalusian homeland. Writer and intellectual, Infante defended ideas linked to the progress of the people, free, universal and free education or the expropriation of lands. Arrested by a group of Falangists, the Andalusian was murdered by the war party launched by Queipo de Llano in the early morning of August 11, 1936 at km 4 of the Carmona highway. His grandson has attended the tribute.
A girl in exile, politicians and grandparents shot
María Egea Muñoz de Zafrawho herself has recorded her statement, was five years old when she became the 2,388th passenger on the Stanbrook, the ship that left Alicante for exile in March 1939. Born in Cartagena into a socialist and republican family, she embarked with his parents and his brother Mateo to Oran. There they were imprisoned in a prison and their father was sent to several Algerian concentration camps until the end of the Second World War. A teacher by profession, María Egea moved to Paris in 1996, where she continues to live.
The Republican and Galician politician Alexandre Bóveda IglesiasCastelao’s trusted man, was imprisoned by the rebels shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War, in July 1936. He was sentenced to death and executed in Poio on August 17. The deputy and minister with Juan Negrín, also director of the newspaper The Socialist, Julián Zugazagoitiahad to go into exile to France at the end of the war, but was arrested by the Gestapo and handed over to the Spanish authorities in July 1940. He was shot on the wall of the Eastern cemetery in Madrid.
The granddaughter of the Cadiz people Carmen Hombre and Juan Máximo Salazar has collected the declaration of reparation with which the State recognizes that her grandparents were victims of Franco’s regime: she, a teacher and member of the UGT. He, an official typographer, councilor of Puerto de Santa María and secretary of the Socialist Group of Jerez de la Frontera. Both were retaliated against at the beginning of the dictatorship and executed a month apart. Carmen, her grandmother, was eight months pregnant.
The judge, the Nazi prisoner and those who searched for their parents
Francisco Javier Elola and Díaz Varela He was a judge of the Supreme Court and deputy for Lugo during the Second Republic. He was also attorney general and one of those in charge of writing the preliminary draft of the 1931 Constitution. Executed in 1939 in Barcelona, his grandson is the one who collected the declaration. Due to his Republican militancy Basilio Blasco He fled his hometown (Allueva, Teruel) when the Civil War broke out. He was imprisoned in France in a concentration camp, captured by the Germans and taken to the Nazi camp of Mauthausen with the number 3479 and then transferred to Gusen, where he would die in 1941.
Another declaration of reparation was collected by the relatives of Joaquín Amigo Aguadoa conservative and Catholic professor born in Granada who was murdered by militiamen in a republican area when he was thrown by the Tajo de Ronda in August 1936. He is the only one of those honored that Tuesday who was a victim of the Civil War but not of the rebels, because today is intended to compensate “all the victims,” Minister Torres said, including those of the conflict. “The law does not intend to open wounds, but to close them,” he added.
Conchita Viera Nevado She herself has collected the declaration of recognition for being the daughter of the socialist mayor of Valencia de Alcántara (Córdoba) murdered at the hands of Falangists when she was three years old. His father’s body was thrown along with 48 others into the Terría mine and exhumed 81 years later. Pine Sosa Sosa He recovered the remains of his in 2017. José Sosa, a tinsmith by profession, was a prisoner in a concentration camp in Gando (Gran Canaria), he was released, but a group of Falangists detained him again while his family never heard from him again. his.
A soldier, the pedagogue and the copla artist
The military Xosé Fortes Bouzan He has also been in charge of collecting his own statement himself. Founding member of the clandestine organization Democratic Military Union, he was convicted and expelled from the Armed Forces and ten years later he was amnestied, now in democracy. The writer and journalist Consuelo Berges She defended libertarian and feminist ideas from the newspapers and magazines in which she wrote. She was a member of the Masonic Lodge of Adoption Love of Madrid, from which she advocated gender equality.
The grandnephew of the copla artist Miguel de Molina has collected the statement on his behalf. A prominent singer and dancer, he participated in festivals in the Republican rear, but was kidnapped and beaten, his head was shaved and he was forced to drink castor oil – a common repressive practice towards women – shouting “faggot and red.” He faced many obstacles to continue working in Spain and went into exile to Argentina in 1942, where he died.
The Republican teacher Justa Freireone of the most innovative pedagogues of the 20th century. She lived in Madrid, where she would be director of a school linked to the Institución Libre de Enseñanza and when the Civil War broke out she would go to Valencia to set up school colonies for children who had been orphaned. At the end of the war, the Francoists arrested her for “secularist practices” and sentenced her to six years in prison, of which she served two in the Ventas prison in Madrid.
Finally, Luis Perez Lara He has been honored as a “symbol of the recovery of memory.” Widely applauded by the audience, he himself collected the declaration as the promoter of the first association of former political prisoners in Spain. During the dictatorship she was sentenced to 13 years in prison, of which she served seven.
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