The president of Aragón, Jorge Azcón, of the PP, sent a letter this Monday to the Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, in response to the report written by three rapporteurs on the repeal of the democratic memory law in his community and on the alternative rules – called “concord” – proposed in the Valencian Community and Castilla y León by the bipartites between popular and Vox. The letter contains errors, falsehoods and inaccuracies. The following fragments of the letter constitute some of them:
I have just sent a letter to António Guterres, Secretary General of the @UN_esin response to the report signed by Salvioli, Baldé and Tidball-Binz released last Friday.
I inform you that the report contains biased and interested information provided by the Government of… pic.twitter.com/LJXQPyZmxu
— Jorge Azcón (@Jorge_Azcon) May 6, 2024
1. “This law [la derogada] It condemned the crimes and atrocities committed by one side during the Civil War, but relativized those committed by the other; and limited the definition of victims to those who suffered death and repression on the one hand, but not on the other.”.
The law 14/2018 on democratic memory of Aragon that the bipartite government of PP and Vox has repealed, says in its statement of reasons: “The duty of memory implied by the management of democratic memory includes the responsibility of the public powers of Aragon to protect the subjective right to seek the truth of the facts, to protect the victims who were victims for committing to democracy, freedom and social justice, and to have sufficient means to repair it. This must be compatible, in the same way, with the recognition of the human rights violations that occurred in Aragon in the republican zone and access to basic and inalienable rights from a humanitarian point of view, such as the right to exhumation and identification by descendants of the murdered people. The fact that those victims were exalted by the Franco regime does not imply assuming such recognition as valid or legitimate. The exercise of the deepening that modern democracy proposes in the values of respect for human dignity and tolerance can only be carried out from an ethical impulse and from democratic radicality, above any ideological affinity.
The state memory law also protects the victims of both sides, but its application in recent years shows that the demands for the opening of graves and the search for missing people come, above all, from those retaliated by Franco’s regime, because since shortly after the beginning of the Civil War and during the dictatorship, Franco promoted his own memory legislation for the fallen of his side. The BOE is full of decrees and orders to assist the relatives of the victims of the “red terror”, among other measures, with an exhumation protocol. These crimes and their authors were also tried through the so-called General Cause. The perpetrators of the shootings of the Republicans thrown into ditches and ditches were not convicted.
2. “It imposed a biased narrative and made a partisan interpretation of history. The law idealized the Second Republic, linking this turbulent period in our history with the current model of democracy.”
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The Aragonese memory law now repealed, effectively, links the current democracy that began after the death of Franco and the Transition period with the last previous period in which citizens were able to choose who governed them, the Second Republic, and refers to the beginning of the Civil War, on July 18, 1936, as a “coup d’état.” It is the term used by the great historians who have delved into that period, such as Paul Preston, Julián Casanova or Ángel Viñas, who have analyzed the figures of Franco’s repression and those of the so-called “red terror.” Denialist and revisionist theories encourage, precisely, Franco’s thesis that the war was not due to an armed coup, but to a Crusade to save the country.
3. “The report contains biased and interested information provided by the Government of Spain. Consequently, it distorts reality and is riddled with inaccuracies, falsehoods and omissions.”
The report of the three United Nations rapporteurs analyzes the official documentation of three regional executives that have repealed democratic memory laws and that in the case of the Valencian Community and Castilla y León already have alternative texts called “of concord.”
4. “Among the other inaccuracies, falsehoods and omissions contained in the report, the following stand out: “the autonomous community of Aragon has not approved any Concordia law. The Cortes of Aragon have approved law 1/2024 of February 15, repealing law 14/2018 of November 8 on democratic memory of Aragon.”
After the greeting, the first paragraph of the report effectively makes a generic allusion and refers, as a whole, to “the so-called laws of concord approved or presented for parliamentary approval in the Autonomous Communities of Aragon, Castilla y León, and Valencia.” . Aragón has not developed an alternative concord law, because it believes that nothing more than a “plan” is needed. But when the three rapporteurs analyze in specific sections what each of these regions has done, they refer specifically to Law 1/2024 repealing the previous norm, which they examine in detail, listing everything that, according to that norm already published in The Official Gazette of the community has been “suppressed” and the effects it entails from their point of view as experts in international Human Rights legislation.
5. “In short, it was a regulatory text that sowed division and confrontation among the Aragonese.”
There is no evidence that the previous regional regulations, like the memory laws in other communities or in the State as a whole, have caused such confrontations. In any case, the law repealed by the bipartite of PP and Vox in Aragón expressly cites, in the section on victims, “the Resolution 60/147 approved by the United Nations General Assembly of December 16, 2005″, which establishes “the basic principles and guidelines on the right of victims of gross violations of international human rights standards and serious violations of international humanitarian law to seek remedies and obtain reparations” and recommends that “legislative bodies”, among others, its application.
Asked this Monday about this letter, Azcón found similarities between dictatorship and democracy: “Franco’s dictatorship was a part of history as was the Second Republic and they are not periods that are peaceful from any point of view.”
In addition to the falsehoods contained in the letter written by Azcón, the letter contradicts the arguments put forward by the leadership of the Popular Party to undervalue the report written by the three UN rapporteurs. From Genoa they have insisted on the premise that the text is not a true opinion of the United Nations, with a reasoning that the PP spokesperson, Borja Sémper, has reaffirmed this Monday. “We have witnessed a hoax these days: we are not talking about a UN report, we are talking about three rapporteurs who independently and autonomously make the decision to write a report,” said the popular leader at a press conference.
The parliamentary spokesperson, Miguel Tellado, has followed the same line by emphasizing that the report corresponds to “independent experts who make this type” of opinions “on a voluntary basis.” “Therefore, I believe that the issue must be precisely circumscribed,” he added at an informative breakfast at the New Economy Forum. In his letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations, Azcón refers to the text of the rapporteurs in these terms “the report of the respectable organization that you lead”, although, when asked by journalists, this Monday he declared: “It is difficult to understand that there be rapporteurs, not the United Nations, but United Nations rapporteurs who give their opinion on what is happening in Aragon without having spoken with the Government of Aragon.”
In Castilla y León and the Valencian Community, the approval of these laws is scheduled for after the European elections in accordance with parliamentary deadlines, so the debate on this issue would remain out of focus during the European election campaign on June 9. “Let the autonomous Courts themselves make their decisions in accordance with their regulations and what they consider appropriate,” Sémper added.
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