Sánchez: «We seek to close the wounds of Francoism, not open them»

The first October 31 after the approval of the Democratic Memory Law brought with it the celebration of the first day of remembrance and homage to all the victims of the military coup, the Civil War and the dictatorship. It is a new anniversary established by the new norm, and which is added to May 8 as a day of remembrance and tribute to the men and women who suffered exile as a result of the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship. The election of October 31 is not trivial, since it was the same day in 1978 when the Cortes approved the Constitution that would be ratified on December 6 in a popular referendum.

Pedro Sánchez wanted to preside over an act in which 20 “diplomas of reparation” were awarded, most of them to people killed during the Civil War or during the dictatorship. Among those honored, there are two priests executed by the coup troops during the war, Anita –one of the Thirteen Roses, nine of them minors, shot in August 1939 in the Madrid cemetery of La Almudena– a mason lodge master, a nursery school teacher, trade unionists and feminists or a leader of the PNV. The first president of Congress after the recovery of democracy, Fernando Álvarez de Miranda, who suffered exile and persecution for his defense of democratic ideas, was also recognized.

When the President of the Government spoke, the first thing he did was remember Benita’s father, Facundo Navacerrada, who was shot in the Colmenar Viejo cemetery in Madrid and whose remains are still being sought by his 90-year-old daughter, who attended the ceremony with a photo of your parent at chest height. “In the name of what can the duty of an entire State be denied to help them in that search? The intention is not to reopen wounds, but to close them,” said Sánchez with his eyes on Benita and in clear allusion to a PP that has promised to repeal the Democratic Memory Law as soon as it reaches Moncloa. “No democracy – added the socialist leader – can be built on the pacts of silence. You have to get rid of old mortgages.

Absence of the PP

From Moncloa the absence in this act of leaders of the PP was censored. The first one by Alberto Núñez Feijóo. But also that of other popular who hold institutional positions, such as the Madrid president Isabel Díaz Ayuso or the mayor of the capital, José Luis Martínez Almeida. All of them were invited to the tribute, say government sources, who add that these absences come on top of others such as the bilateral summit with Germany held in A Coruña on October 5. It is, they sentence in Moncloa, a deliberate strategy of the PP to boycott the agenda of the Prime Minister.