Franco's Bitter Legacy

I think this is an excellent article on how Spain needs to deal with Franco's bitter legacy once and for all.

The author, James Badcock, points out at some of the discrepancies I have mentioned a couple of times at this blog:

Last September, in response to the newly-elected Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) proposal to create a commission to ‘restore remembrance and dignity’ of the victims of Franco’s Nationalist forces, a team from Nizkor, a Hispano-American human rights organisation grouping 15 organisations including the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARHM), presented the Party with a series of demands.

First, they demanded government funding and resources for the location of mass graves, where the ARHM estimate that 30,000 bodies lie unaccounted for. These are mostly people accused of ‘aiding the rebellion’, in other words, supporting the Republican government in the years leading up to the conflict.

And:

Nizkor’s second demand was for the removal of the symbols of Franco’s regime. Besides the controversial statue, Madrid alone has a total of 167 streets that continue to bear the name of either the Generalísimo himself or that of one of his associates. Referring to a declaration by the United Nations that denounces the ‘criminal nature’ of Franco’s regime, Nizkor asks for ‘all the arbitrary and illegal military and criminal trials to be nullified’.

A mention of the Valle de los Caídos was in order:

Nizkor’s third demand focuses on Franco’s memorial monument, the Valley of the Fallen, built by 1,200 political prisoners used as slave labour. The ARMH wants a notice put up that make it clear to the mainly foreign visitors of the grandiose tomb exactly how the gigantic cross above the dictator’s resting place was erected.

And well, this is the part that pertains to the central topic of this blog:

The reality is that there are in many ways ‘two Spains’: the nationalist Right of today rails against regional separatism in Catalonia and the Basque Country; the socialist Left focuses on any potential abuse of power by a conservative politician as a sign of anti-democratic tendencies. Any issue that directly relates to the Civil War magnifies such divisions, as was demonstrated in the recent controversy over Civil War documents.

The Nizkor people have their own webpage both in Spanish and English.

The story appeared at Index.

You can also read the whole story here.

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