The Prosecutor’s Office may force the dissolution of Francoist associations by criminal proceedings if he appreciates crimes of incitement to hatred or violence, and in that effort the memorialist groups will be legitimized to collaborate with the Public Ministry.
This is collected in a transactional amendment that the PSOE and its parliamentary allies (Sumar, ERC, Junts, Bildu, PNV and BNG) have incorporated this Wednesday in Congress into the proposal of law that the Socialists promoted last year to reform the law regulating the right of association.
That reform, which Congress agreed to process in October 2024 with the only vote against Vox, seeks to comply with the seventh additional provision of the Democratic Memory Law, which dates back to October 2022, and that it already provided for the modification of the Law of Associations in this regard.
Development of the Democratic Memory Law
The proposal of the PSOE, collected by Europa Press, consists in the inclusion of an additional provision in the aforementioned standard to include as a cause of dissolution “the realization of activities that constitute apology of Francoism.”
The text specifies that this apology can be produced “either by extolling the coup d’etat of 1936 or the posterior dictatorship or exalting its leaders, when it concurs contempt and humiliation of the dignity of the victims of the coup d’etat of 1936, of the war of Spain or Franco, or direct or indirect incitement to hatred or violence against them for their condition of such”.
And, in addition, it is made clear that the reason for dissolution will be applied regardless of the theoretical purposes and activities embodied in the statutes and that the association questioned has fulfilled or not the duty of registration registration, since this is expected only for advertising purposes.
The socialist initiative emphasizes that the solution will have to be carried out by means of a judicial resolution and that it will correspond to the Fiscal Ministry “the exercise of the action in this type of processes.”
A second solution of dissolution
But to that text has now been added a transactional amendment, to which Europa Press has had access, to open another door to the dissolution, this time by criminal means: “The Fiscal Ministry will assess the exercise of the criminal action of dissolution for crimes related to fundamental rights, especially in relation to the crime of illegal association, when assumptions of incitement to hatred or violence”, collect the addition that has been incorporated this Thursday in the present Constitutional Commission.
In addition, the amendment allows to recognize the “active legitimation” in this area to the associations, entities or legal persons that have as its purposes the defense of democratic memory and the victims of the coup d’etat of 1936 and the dictatorship. ”
After passing through the presentation, the forecast is that the law of the PSOE be taken next week to the Constitutional Commission and that in April is approved in the Plenary of the Congress, since it is an organic law, it will need a support of at least 176 deputies (absolute majority) for its approval and remission to the Senate.
The norm affects only associations, since in the case of foundations such as the Franco Foundation, attempts at dissolution follow another path and already depend on the Ministry of Culture headed by Ernest Urtasun, to add.
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