The Council of Ministers will grant nationality to almost 170 descendants of international brigade members who participated in the Spanish Civil War. It will be next Tuesday, as announced by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, during the event held this Friday in Madrid on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance and Tribute to all the victims of the military coup, the Civil War and the dictatorship. The president has also recalled – because he had already announced it previously – that during this month of November the Council of Ministers will also approve the Royal Decree that regulates the catalog of symbols and also elements contrary to democratic memory, “so that they are removed once and for all from our streets, our squares, our towns and our cities. Without excuses and without delays. Out of common sense, because no democracy, least of all ours, honors coup plotters,” Sánchez has defended.
During the event, which was held for the fourth time chaired by Sánchez since the Democratic Memory Law established October 31 as a day of remembrance and tribute to all the victims of the military coup, the Civil War and the dictatorship – last year it had to be postponed due to the DANA of Valencia – the Government honored 18 victims of the Civil War and the dictatorship. Famous names, such as Federico García Lorca or María Moliner, but also anonymous, such as María Luisa Ramos Barril, who was deported to Mauthausen, or the 12 seamstresses from the Víznar grave, in Granada.
Laura García Lorca, the poet's niece, spoke on behalf of the victims, thanking the president for “his commitment to democratic memory and understanding that moral reparation is a duty. Not only with our own, but with all those who were victims of the war and the dictatorship. Today, upon receiving this recognition, we do not think only of Federico, but of the tens of thousands of women and men who lost their lives, freedom or the right to their word, of those who were shot, imprisoned, exiled, purged or condemned to silence and also to internal exile for years,” she claimed, visibly moved.
Like all the interveners, García Lorca has claimed that “to recognize the victims today, to remember their names, is also to say that democracy is built on memory, never on forgetting”, and has highlighted that “for many years hope seemed distant, but patient, tenacious memory has continued its path, it has survived in the archives, in poetry, in the pools, in the hands of family members who never stopped remembering and searching.”
“It is impossible to disagree”
Previously, the Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, had intervened, defending that this type of reparations are “inherent to democracy” and with which “if you have a minimum of empathy” it is “impossible” not to agree. The minister recalled that “democracy was won in the streets even if the dictator died in bed”, and has warned that the acts of memory and commemoration on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Franco's death do not end on 20-N (the day of the dictator's death) or when the year ends. “We will continue to recognize the people, institutions and groups that fought for democracy,” he explained. “It is important that today's youth know our past,” at a time when “sexist, racist, and homophobic messages proliferate,” Torres warned, who also pointed out the Spanish particularity.
“While in other countries being anti-fascist is inherent to any democrat, whether left or right, in Spain we hear public representatives say that Franco's regime was a time of progress,” he was surprised. Along these lines, Torres has described as “inconceivable” the refusal of the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, to have a plaque placed at the headquarters of the Community of Madrid remembering that it was a place of torture, something that the Government will also do. “Reactions of this type justify the informative work of the events,” the minister defended.
The minister, who was participating in the event for the second year, honored those present and absent. To the people who were “the voice of feminism in the 20th century, of the avant-garde, of art, voices that spoke against the oppression of minorities,” as Lorca did. Torres paid tribute to María Luisa Ramos, present at the event, who “at 98 years old continues to spread the values of democracy and freedom.” To Luis Buñuel, exiled in America, to María Moliner or Cristino Mallo, “internal exiles.” And he closed with a wish: “May memory be our balm because memory is democracy.”
In addition to the president and Torres, the second vice president and Minister of Labor and Social Economy, Yolanda Díaz, attended; the third vice president and minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Sara Aagesen; the Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Cortes, Félix Bolaños; the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles; the Minister of Housing and Urban Agenda, Isabel Rodríguez; the Minister for Digital Transformation and Public Service, Óscar López, and the Minister of Youth and Children, Sira Rego.
The 18 people honored
These are the 18 people honored:
Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) – poet and playwright.
María Moliner (1900-1981) – lexicographer and librarian.
Maruja Mallo (1902-1995) – surrealist painter.
Luis Buñuel (1900-1983) – filmmaker.
Margot Moles Piña (1910-1987) – pioneer athlete in women's sports.
Manuel Pina Picazo (1908-1942) – military man and deported after the war.
Diego José Paulino Advantage Milan (1880-1936) – bishop of Almería murdered at the beginning of the war.
Antonio Menchen Bartolomé (1902-1939) – railway worker, UGT activist, shot.
Joaquín Moreno Tormos – CNT-FAI militant, murdered by Franco's repression.
Josefina Samper Rojas (1927-2018) – labor and anti-Franco activist.
Melchor Rodríguez García (1893-1972) – anarchist unionist known as “The Red Angel”.
Manuel Ciges Aparicio (1873-1936) – journalist, writer and politician executed at the beginning of the war.
María Luisa Ramos Barril (1927-) – exiled and deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp.
Cristino Mallo (1905-1989) – sculptor, brother of Maruja Mallo, involved in repression and internal exile.
The twelve seamstresses of the Víznar grave – collective of twelve women murdered in the Víznar Ravine.