Santiago Abascal is the leader of the far-right Spanish party Vox Photo: Oscar del Pozo/AFP
A new law passed in Spain is called an attempt to “whitewash” » history as he refuses to call the country's former fascist leader General Franco a dictator.
The law was passed this week by the regional government coalition of Castile and León, which includes Vox, the first far-right party elected since Franco's death in 1977, and the conservative Popular Party (PP).
The Accord Act does not mention the 1936 military coup that triggered three years of deadly Spanish civil war, and does not use the word «dictatorship», but the preamble states , that «there was never a consensus about… the civil war and Francoism.»
He also seeks to keep the Franco regime's ongoing murder investigations under greater secrecy, using data confidentiality requirements to prevent the identities of exhumed victims' bodies or their killers from being made public.
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Emilio Silva, whose grandfather, also named Emilio, was killed in the province of Leon by fascist Falangist forces in 1936 because of his leftist affiliation, said the bill was “an insult to families like mine.”
General Franco souvenirs for sale at the Vox rally. Photo: Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images
Mr Silva removed his grandfather's body from a mass grave. in 2000, this was the first such exhumation in two decades.
This prompted the creation of the Spanish Association for the Reconstruction of Historical Memory and led to the adoption of national and regional legislation aimed at helping others who wanted to bury their murdered relatives with dignity.
“Someone decided that my grandfather shouldn't exist. ; he had to disappear, and my grandmother lived for 40 years under the rule of murderers, and they took everything she had from her,” he said.
“It is incomprehensible that this story should be whitewashed by parliament.
The coalition between PP and Vox, formed in 2022, marked a watershed moment in Spanish politics. The two parties now rule together in four other regions, where they are pushing for similar steps to replace existing historical memory laws.
Luis Tudanca, opposition leader of the Socialist Party of Castile and Leon, said the proposal would “reanimate Francoism.” . .”
“It’s like defending Nazism and the Holocaust in Germany today, or defending Mussolini and fascism in Italy,” he said.
A spokesman for Spain's socialist government told The Telegraph it would examine whether the changes contravened the country's Democratic Memory Law. The new law has yet to be passed by the regional parliament, but this is likely.
The purpose of the law appears to be to shift the focus from Franco's atrocities to the atrocities committed by the left. factions to serve Vox's far-right agenda.
The far-right party Vox entered a coalition with the PP in 2022. : Cesar Manso/AFP
Carlos Menéndez, spokesman for the Castilla y León party, said the law is “free of ideology, does not share or respect all victims.”
“We will end the biased and sectarian view of history, unsuitable for democracy and more corresponds to a totalitarian regime,” he added.
According to the left-wing “Red Peril,” just under 2,000 people died in Castile and León during and after the war. research by British historian Sir Paul Preston. Most of their bodies were discovered during Franco's 40-year dictatorship.
In contrast, more than 17,000 people in the region were killed in summary executions carried out by fascist death squads or ordered by Franco's military courts, according to Sir Floor. Thousands of their bodies remain in more than 300 mass graves across Castile and León that have yet to be opened.
The new law's strict data privacy requirements effectively mean that «we will not be able to disclose the information.» the identities of the people involved in the murders; we cannot talk about the killers or their victims,” Mr. Silva said.
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