The Council of Ministers approved this Tuesday the constitution of three commissions to develop the Democratic Memory Law of 2022. One to study the human rights violations suffered, between 1978 and 1983, by people who were fighting to consolidate democracy; another to analyze possible deficiencies in the economic compensation granted until now to victims of the Civil War and the dictatorship; and the third, for memory and reconciliation with the gypsy people. They should have been ready in October of last year, but successive electoral calls delayed the Government's plans.
The first commission obeys the obligation established in the sixteenth additional provision of the standard. It will be chaired by the Secretary of State by memory, Fernando Martínez, and will have 12 other members: Nicolás Sartorius, lawyer and co-founder of the CC OO union who was imprisoned during the dictatorship; Federico Mayor Zaragoza, former director general of UNESCO; the historians José Álvarez Junco, Carme Molinero, Antonio Rivera, Sophie Gaby and Encarnación Lemus; the professors of Criminal Law Araceli Manjón, Jon-Mirena Landa and Paz Mercedes de la Cuesta; the labor lawyer, former PSOE deputy and founder of the NGO Movement for Peace Francisca Sauquillo; and the journalist José Antonio Martínez Soler.
During the debate on the law, the plan to create this commission generated great controversy because, by covering events that occurred until December 1983, the right claimed that it was a concession to EH Bildu to include the crimes of the GAL. The former president of the Government José María Aznar maintained that it was a rule “made by terrorists and agreed upon with terrorists.” Inés Arrimadas, from Ciudadanos, presented it as the “infamous” project of “the children of ETA.” The Secretary of State for Democratic Memory, Fernando Martínez, already clarified at the time how this additional provision had been negotiated and what its objectives were: “An association of victims of the Transition had proposed this temporary extension to us. So did almost all nationalist and left-wing groups. Bildu wanted to take it practically to the present day. The PSOE and Unidas Podemos proposed in an amendment that this technical commission cover until 1982, they asked us until 1983 and we said yes. It was our proposal, so that no one could accuse us that only human rights violations from the UCD era would be studied. And other groups joined that proposal, including Bildu.”
The additional provision is designed “to recognize victims of human rights violations who worked for the consolidation of democracy and the defense of democratic values since 1978 and who could not benefit from the law.” [que comprende los hechos ocurridos entre el golpe de Estado de 1936 y la promulgación de la Constitución]”Martinez explained. For example, Yolanda González, from the Socialist Workers Party, who was murdered by the extreme right in 1980, or the neighborhood leader Arturo Pajuelo, stabbed to death that same year. The Secretary of State stressed that the law “in no way” includes ETA members José Antonio Lasa and José Ignacio Zabala as victims of Francoism. “They were victims of the GAL, [y esos crímenes] They were tried and sentenced. The sentence recognizes them [a Lasa y Zabala] as members of ETA. “They do not fit into this law because ETA was not fighting for the consolidation of democracy, but to destabilize it.”
Cheap repairs
The second commission derived from the memory law will be made up of representatives from various ministries, although their names have not yet been chosen. It obeys the fifteenth additional provision of the law, which requires studying the economic measures for the victims of the Civil War and the dictatorship recognized in both state and regional regulations (which the PP and Vox have agreed to repeal in their regional governments). The aim is to verify the degree of coverage achieved with these compensations from the Transition until now, and to detect possible deficiencies to correct them.
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The law recognizes as victims, among others, “people who suffered economic repression with seizures and total or partial loss of property, fines, disqualification and exile,” and a specific audit is also planned for these seizures. In those years it was common to fine the person who was shot, so that his relatives, who in most cases could not even recover the body to bury it, also owed large amounts of money. This is what happened, for example, to the family of Antonio Cañadas, mayor of Guadalajara at the beginning of the Civil War. “My father,” his daughter, Emilia Cañadas, told EL PAÍS, “was shot on June 20, 1939 and then fined 14,000 pesetas for political responsibilities.” “Since we didn't have them, they seized us. They came home and took everything. With my mother's bride's quilt they made a pallium for the priest; They tore the mattresses in case we had money. “They left us on the street.”
The third commission created this Tuesday by the Council of Ministers responds to the twelfth additional provision of the memory law and follows a resolution of the European Parliament from 2017 on the “aspects of the integration of Roma in the Union related to fundamental rights” . This commission, also chaired by Fernando Martínez, will have representatives from several ministries, the State Council of the Gypsy People, the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP), which will elect two of its members, and two others appointed by the autonomous communities in the territorial council next May, in addition to two experts chosen by the Secretary of State for Memory. This commission will prepare a report “on the measures to apply the principles of truth, justice, reparation and non-repetition in relation to the historical situation of the Roma people in Spain.”
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