“Of course we kill them.
What did you expect?
What would I take with me 4,000 red captives?
Interview with General Yagüe. Badajoz, 1936
I must be one of the few people who read page 66 of the Bill of Democratic Memory that the Council of Ministers presented to the Cortes Generales for discussion in parliament. I say this because I have taken the trouble to read most of the opinion articles on this preliminary draft in the Spanish press lately, and my conclusion is that almost all of them. and according to nothing I have read, beyond the ordinary words that have been made and repeated for decades against the investigation of the crimes of Francoism, no one has apparently bothered to explain the grave sins committed by the Government. And that’s because they haven’t read a single paragraph of this future law. None of the bright minds who criticize this bill, why their articles are revenge, civil war, attack on democracy, etc. He cannot explain to us what he sees as
As stated in the Disclosure Memorandum, it is the Government’s intention that society as a whole reflects on the use of violence in our country while at the same time giving the memory of the victims of this violence the credibility it deserves. Our current Constitution is not only a bracket of democracy in a history of absolute monarchies, coups, chiefdoms and dictatorships, but above all the result of a path to freedom through the efforts of thousands of people who have been imprisoned, tortured and dispossessed. The attempt to perpetuate the Old Regime, in which the Catholic Church of Spain played a leading role, tried to raise their voices against harassment and the claim that the Middle Ages were still established in Spain, using nonsense such as burning property, burning people alive, torturing women as witches, and their miserable sexual instincts. accusing them of being underage to satisfy. Since the Constitution of 1812, Spain has gradually charted a path of freedoms and rights that enemies of democracy and supporters of obscenity have done everything possible to eradicate.
What are the purposes of this law? There are two of them and I write them exactly. “On the one hand, it aims to provide information about the democratic phases of our history and all the individual personalities and collective movements that have gradually built up with great sacrifice the links of the democratic culture that allowed the agreements of the 1978 Constitution to be reached. On the other hand, this Law aims to preserve and perpetuate the memory of the victims of the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship through knowledge of the truth, a right of the victims, the establishment of justice and the promotion of reparations. establishment of a memory task of public powers.”
The goal, of course, is to unearth the thousands of dead buried in thousands of gutters in Spain, waiting to be identified and honored. Also outright ban the idea that violence can be used to impose political ideas, and above all honor the memory of those who defended freedom, democracy and the 1931 constitutional order against the coup army, the oligarchy and most of the monarchists.
Although in recent years a Francoist rhetoric has been developed in the sense of trying to legitimize the 1936 coup and the subsequent bloody dictatorship in Asturias in 1934 due to the previous left-wing coup and similar nonsense, the truth is that never, I repeat, never and the Second Republic Despite all the mistakes .
What’s wrong with this law? Well, let the truth be known and written in black on white. The heirs of those who bombarded cities, raped women in the Phalange and Civil Guard barracks, tortured in police stations, stole the money and property of Republicans, socialists and communists, people with Spanish names and surnames. Those who are left with the doctors’ chairs and their fate do not want to be reminded of what their parents and grandparents did. It’s understandable. But the facts and memories of those who fought for freedom will always prevail over personal interests.
Feared by years of silence, the resentment of Francoists and the inability to speak, the descendants, a fearless generation, want their ancestors’ corpses to be rescued and honored as defenders of freedom.