In a letter signed in 1962, a close collaborator of the Franco family confesses the strategy they have devised so that a public palace in A Coruña passes into the hands of the dictator in a discreet manner. This is how he describes the operation designed around the Cornide House to a senior official from the Ministry of Finance. He refers to the head of state as “His Excellency” and to his wife as “the Lady”:
“Today the deadline for the auction of the famous house that His Excellency desired so much has finally ended. The plenary session also meets today [del Ayuntamiento] to award it to an individual and he will sell it to the Lady. This is how we have explained it to His Excellency because it is the best formula, since in this way an award of assets that belonged to the State to the Caudillo himself is not made. The gentlemen are delighted because they have achieved the desire to be able to have a house in La Coruña, so that when the Lady has to move there will be no need to open the Pazo de Meirás, which causes so much inconvenience, due to how large this residence is and the number of servants and servants that are needed.”
Everything happened as described in this letter included in the report prepared by the historian Emilio Grandío on behalf of the City Council of A Coruña. That “individual” who acted as a screen in the auction is the businessman Pedro Barrié de la Maza, founder of Banco Pastor (today absorbed by Banco Santander) and of the electricity company Unión Fenosa (acquired by Naturgy). In the bidding he paid 305,000 pesetas for Casa Cornide, a building of the Ministry of Education that had been transferred to the City Council. Three days later, he sold it to Carmen Polo for only 25,000 pesetas.
The Franco family has enjoyed this historic mansion built in the 19th century in the Old City of A Coruña for more than six decades. In September 2019, two months after the State took the recovery of the Meirás manor to court, the A Coruña municipal corporation approved filing a lawsuit in court to revert the mansion to public assets. The BNG proposal was unanimously supported by the PSOE, PP, Marea Atlántica and Ciudadanos.
The first step taken by the government of the socialist Inés Rey was to commission a historical report and another legal report, and request its protection as an Asset of Cultural Interest (BIC) from the Xunta. This last measure was approved last April and, as the deadline for the Francos to appeal has expired, it has been firm for a few days. The judicial claim, however, has still not been filed. The municipal government assures that it will file it before the end of this year and justifies the wait by the need to “reinforce it” with the declaration of the mansion as a BIC.
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Now that the building has received this protection, the Franco family is required by law to open Cornide House to the public four days a month. His lawyer, Luis Felipe Utrera-Molina, son of a former minister of the dictatorship, has not answered this newspaper’s questions about when they will comply with this legal requirement. When the Meirás manor was declared BIC in 2008 by a Xunta led by the PSOE and the BNG, the dictator’s heirs took almost three years to allow visits. After ousting the left in 2009, the Government of the current leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, agreed to negotiate with the then owners of Meirás and financed with public funds the opening of the farm that belonged to Emilia Pardo Bazán. In 2017, the Galician Administration had to file charges against the family for obstructing citizens’ right to visit the manor. The current regional Executive reports that it has already informed the Francos that they must allow visits to their mansion in Coruña, but does not clarify what time it will give them to comply with this requirement taking into account the background and that the rule does not set any deadline.
The obstacles to ensure that Casa Cornide once again belongs to all the people of A Coruña have caused several protests in recent years. The next one is celebrated this Saturday. It is convened by fifty entities, including historical memory associations, unions, neighborhood groups, all political parties except PSOE and PP (the Socialist Youth do support it) and cultural organizations. The march will leave the Plaza de María Pita at 12 noon and, as on other occasions, will have two exceptional guests: Francisco Franco and Carmen Polo, revived by the actors Fernando Morán and Isabel Risco. The promoters of the mobilization demand that the Xunta force the heirs of the dictator to open the Cornide House to visits before the end of this year and that the City Council, that it present the legal claim this November and withdraw all distinctions to the three people from A Coruña who were complicit in the operation.
And the implications of the matter in A Coruña go beyond the recovery of the building. There are three prominent men of the dictatorship who collaborated with the Francos in what the City Council considers a “plot” for the “fraudulent acquisition” of the Cornide House and who still retain all the honors that were offered to them then, from streets to municipal titles : the businessman Pedro Barrié de la Maza, who was also instrumental in the usurpation of the Meirás pazo, and the Franco mayors Alfonso Molina and Sergio Peñamaría de Llano. All of this despite what is established in the historical memory law and in a city that has been governed by left-wing parties in 38 of the 44 years of democratic corporations (32 of them with the council chaired by the PSOE). A report commissioned by the current socialist executive supports the withdrawal of distinctions from these three personalities since 2020 on historical grounds, but it has never been applied. The local government has avoided explaining why.
Manuel Monge, president of the Defensa do Común association that leads the mobilization, considers citizen pressure essential for the administrations to put pressure on the dictator’s heirs. “The Francos always delay everything because they have a great team of lawyers and a lot of money,” warns this historical memory activist, who has cataloged in A Coruña 216 Francoist symbol elements that survive the current legislation, “a true record and a shame”. He believes that the local socialist government has not yet filed the lawsuit due to its “collateral effects”: “They assume that withdrawing the honors from Barrié, Molina and Peñamaría de Llano is going to have a very great political cost because it is going to be used by the PP . That’s why they don’t dare.”
Since 2020, the City Council has had a legal report, prepared by the Chair of Historical Memory of the University of A Coruña, which points out several legal holes in the operation that handed over Casa Cornide to the Francos. The study considers the auction void due to various defects in its administrative processing and also the sale between the council and Barrié first, and between the businessman and Carmen Polo later, due to “absolute simulation.” The dictator’s family put the mansion up for sale on a real estate portal in the summer of 2020 and it remains there. The promoters of this Saturday’s demonstration reported shortly after that they were taking belongings from inside. “Maybe when we get it back, there will be four chairs left there,” warns Monge.
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