The Government of the Canary Islands (CC-PP) has made effective this Friday in the Official Gazette of the autonomous community the repeal of the Catalog of Francoist Relics approved in the previous legislature of Ángel Víctor Torres (PSOE). It does so at the request of the Santa Cruz de Tenerife City Council, which has always opposed this document.
In the order published this Friday, it is mentioned that the Autonomous Body of Culture of the City Council of Santa Cruz de Tenerife formulated a prior requirement for administrative litigation. Likewise, it emphasizes the “omission of the mandatory hearing process to the Santa Cruz de Tenerife City Council, prior to the formulation of the proposed resolution.”
As indicated in the BOC, “the declaration of nullity by operation of law (due to omission of the hearing procedure) of the Order of the extinct Department of Education, Universities, Culture and Sports of the Government of the Canary Islands, dated November 4, 2022 , would force the effects of the administrative action to be taken back to the moment prior to the formulation of the proposal by the Technical Commission of Historical Memory, and to carry out the well-deserved hearing and public information process.
Another reason for the repeal is the “irregularity regarding the determination of the territorial scope of the approved Catalog.” This statement is made despite the fact that the The intention of the previous Government was always to publish it in phases. In fact, the catalog of the rest of the Canary Islands capitals has been completed, but the CC-PP Executive has not published them in the Official Gazette.
The BOC resolution states that “the Order that is now being appealed approves a Catalog of symbols, streets, monuments and Francoist mentions existing in the area of the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, that is, it does not even have an island area, not even at the provincial level, much less at the autonomous level, which is what is included in the mandate of the Canary Islands Law.” This is a reasoning that is included in the report of the General Directorate of Culture and Cultural Heritage of January 22, 2024, as well as in the judicial order of May 11, 2023.
On the other hand, another argument sustained to question the validity of the contested resolution “is the absence of the mandatory prior approval of the Regional Strategy of Historical Memory”, a document that was approved after the Catalog.
The General Directorate of Culture and Cultural Heritage affirms that Law 5/2018, in no section expressly recognizes the mandatory approval of the Strategy for the Historical Memory of the Canary Islands prior to the approval of the Catalog.
But now the opposite is argued: “The approval of a catalog limited exclusively to the municipality of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, without having previously approved the Strategy for the Historical Memory of the Canary Islands, determines that the criteria used by the writing team (professors from the ULL ) hired to prepare the catalog lack the necessary global reference support for the entire territory and said catalog was based on criteria established by the team of teachers hired and limited to the municipality of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
It is worth remembering that the Canarian Government published in May of last year the first steps for the repeal of the Catalog. For this, a hearing was held. In the process they presented allegations the Historical Memory associations of Tenerife and La Palma as well as the political party Podemos Canarias. One of the groups that wants the Franco monument to remain standing also presented allegations: the Association for the Research and Protection of the San Miguel Arcángel Historical Heritage.
A battle of years to continue the monument to Franco
The Catalog of Vestiges of the Canary Islands was published in November 2022 with all the elements that the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife had to eliminate from its street map. It started in this city because there was already this previous work commissioned by José Manuel Bermúdez in 2018 to avoid responsibilities in court when the lawyer expert in historical memory Eduardo Ranz brought the monument to Franco to court. From the previous Government of the Canary Islands (led by Ángel Víctor Torres, now Minister of Democratic Memory) it was always maintained that the catalog would be completed with that of the rest of the municipalities of the Islands and, in fact, there is a collaboration agreement with the universities Canary Islands to complete it until 2025.
The Government of the Canary Islands said in June of last year that it estimates that in March 2025 the Catalog of Francoist Relics of the Autonomous Community, provided for in the Democratic Memory Law, will have been completed. As explained by the Executive in a statement, it was for reasons of legal security that the executive accepted the request of the Santa Cruz de Tenerife City Council to repeal the catalog of Francoist symbols, streets, monuments and mentions of the city.
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