The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced this Tuesday that the Government will deploy a campaign to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Franco’s death that will extend throughout 2025 and will take place in “more than a hundred events.” He did so at the event on the occasion of the day in tribute to the victims of the Civil War and the dictatorship, which was scheduled for October 31 but was postponed due to DANA and was finally held this Tuesday in Madrid.
Under the motto ‘Spain in freedom’, the Executive will develop throughout the year “an extensive program of activities”, which, as elDiario.es already reported, will focus many of its actions on young people and will seek to bring and explain in educational centers the Second Republic and the dictatorship and what it implied for rights and freedoms. “This commemoration will have a single objective: to highlight the great transformation in this half century of democracy and to honor the people and groups who made it possible,” said Sánchez.
The president has specified that this battery of activities will start on January 8 and will focus on “cultural activities, events, schools or museums”, but the specific details will be explained at the beginning of the year, said Sánchez, who announced the creation “ of a special commissioner, a scientific committee of experts” and “collaboration with all public administrations” for the execution of the program.
Sánchez has also regretted “the speeches exalting the dictatorship” that are heard “in Congress”, in clear reference to Vox, and, in his words, “the danger of regression is real where the meaning of one of the most beautiful words: concord,” he said, pointing to the so-called “concord” laws that PP and Vox promote in several autonomous communities to replace the democratic memory laws. “There is no harmony when victims and executioners are compared, when historical lies are made or laws are agreed upon with the enemies of freedom and equality. There is no possible harmony when there is deliberate forgetfulness and falsification of history,” he stated.
The Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, has expressed himself along the same lines, stating that “it is not concord to repeal the laws that guarantee reparation for the victims nor is it freedom to raise your arm and sing ‘Face to the sun’. “Freedom is synonymous with democracy.”
The minister and the President of the Government have been in charge of delivering the declarations of reparation to twenty victims of the Civil War and Francoism or their relatives with whom they officially recognize that they were victims. In some cases, such as that of the poet Miguel Hernández or the militia Maricuela, The State has also officially declared the annulment of their sentences. In practice, this declaration of recognition and reparation is a figure contained in the Democratic Memory Law to which victims are entitled and of which the Government has already delivered more than 600.
With this, the Executive wants to “repair the memory” of those who suffered persecution and violence. Thus, among the victims honored are also the young anti-Francoist Enrique Ruano, the philosopher María Zambrano, the one known as the father of the Andalusian homeland, Blas Infante, the poet Vicente Aleixandre, the singer Miguel de Molina or the teacher and pedagogue Justa Freire. There are also names unknown to the general public: anonymous men and women who fought for democracy and were harshly retaliated against, and descendants of these victims who have dedicated their lives to honoring them and, in many cases, to removing their remains from the land to which they belonged. They were thrown.
“We can vigil over his grave, but those who are in the ditches have no one to bring them flowers.”
Lucía Izquierdo, daughter-in-law of Miguel Hernández, gave an applauded speech at the event to honor the victims of the Civil War and the dictatorship organized this Tuesday by the Government, in which the Government delivered around twenty declarations of reparation to victims of Francoism, among them the poet from Alicante. “We can vigil his grave, it is the most visited grave in the entire province, but those who are in the ditches and in the graves have no one to bring them flowers. “That is the sadness of their relatives, who are leaving this world,” he said.
Hernández’s daughter-in-law recalled that from Franco’s courts “our loved ones came out with death sentences and life sentences” and “the graves and gutters were filled.” And he explained that in the case of the poet “we were luckier if you can call him that” because Josefina, his widow, “was able to say goodbye to his body and watch it and it was handed over to him in the Alicante cemetery thanks to the help of Vicente Aleixandre, “the one we loved and love with all our soul.” The Nobel Prize in Literature, also honored at this event, raised the money so that Josefina could buy the poet’s grave: “Without it he would not have been buried where he is, he would have gone to a grave or ossuary, that was his destiny.”
Izquierdo has spoken for all the victims to affirm that “this has been a very long road” to get the State to recognize and honor the victims of the dictatorship: “We have been given a document in which it says that the memory of our heroes because that is what they were, heroes who fought for freedom,” he stated. Furthermore, in the case of Miguel Hernández and other victims of reprisals who were sentenced, the declaration recognizes that their sentences are null and void, he celebrated.
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