Let’s see how they position themselves before this new Democratic Memory Law the different media blocs based on their editorial line, because I think it serves to better understand what this Law entails. In digital and left-wing media, the main framework is “It represents progress, but many things remain to be done.” I give you three examples.
Title of Tide: “Advances and gaps in the new memory law, 15 years later”.
holder of the nose: “Lights and shadows for memorial associations regarding the new Memory Law” .
Title of Coffeemaker: “The memory law uses the word ‘victim’ 142 times and ‘executioner’ zero times.
Well, the progressive orbit of the PSOE defends the law, especially against the arguments of the right, which we will see below. Two examples: Chain BE: “The Government carries out the Democratic Memory Law with the right wing against it and insisting on ETA’s argument.”
Publisher of The country from a few days ago: “A more inclusive and plural democratic memory. The Government incorporates different sensitivities in a law that seeks to neutralize oblivion and heal old wounds”.
In the case of PRISA Group, which comes with these two headlines, is not a minor issue. Because it helps to understand where that communication group is currently positioned as a result of Sánchez taking power in the PSOEtaking into account that in that party there are other voices (let’s say, those of the old guard), who are publicly expressing themselves in absolute agreement with the right in this matter, as we will see later.
And that this Law, as the headlines of the left-wing media said that I read you before, is not that it goes that far either. But let’s see first what the media right says. The main framework that the right is trying to build – the head of the Chain BE– consists in introducing the signifier “ETA” in the discussion, underlining the fact that Bildu has supported the Law and arguing that it is an offense to the victims of ETA because it focuses on the victims of Francoism and the transition. Here are three headlines: Zero Wave: “Congress approves the controversial Historical Memory Law due to the pact with Bildu”. The voice of Galicia: “The Congress approves the Law of Democratic Memory that the PSOE agreed with Bildu”. The Spanish: “Zapatero assures that the Memory Law agreed with Bildu “perfects Spain”.
Also telemadrid has simply dedicated himself to lying when he says literally that the Law “is provoking almost unanimous rejection” of the victims of ETA terrorism (and reinforces it by giving voice to a person with a very specific speech against the Law that does not represent, far from it, the entire group of victims of terrorism).
Various victims’ associations (The Victims of Terrorism Foundation, COVITE, the 11M Association and the Fernando Buesa Foundation) they have distanced themselves from that position and have refused to be instrumentalized by the PP to oppose the Democratic Memory Law. Look. Statements by Consuelo Ordóñez, President of COVITE, the Collective of Victims of Terrorism: “It is the height that some victims are used to deny the rights of others, that some victims are wanted to deny the rights of other victims of very serious human rights violations. I do not understand the representatives of victims who go to that photo, the who applaud a PP who says he is going to repeal that law. Don’t count on me. The victims of Francoism are worse off than us, that’s fair to acknowledge.”
That is the main wild card to try to change the framework on this Law. But from there, the classic arguments of the official discourse on the civil war, the dictatorship and the transition also appear.
There are 4 very clear elements of the official story that is still installed in this country about Franco’s genocide, the 40-year dictatorship and the transition that was built on the non-defeat of fascism: “exemplary transition”; a specific type of left that claims from the right; the idea of reconciliation linked to forgetting and not repairing, and the idea of “one another”, they were all bad, they all committed excesses, the civil war was not a class war, it was a fratricidal war between brothers because that is the Spanish character. Which in Argentinafor example, call the “theory of the two demons”, No? The coup soldiers were the same as their victims who were fighting for a better country.
“The Two Demons”. The difference is that here in Spain that framework continues to be the hegemonic one, and it is in the cinema, literature, the media… while in Argentina, as a result of the memorialist process that has taken place in recent years, defending that there were no good guys and bad guys and equating the victims with the executioners today is quite unpresentable. There are people on the right who defend him, of course, but luckily that story is subordinate.
This official narrative is hegemonic because it is not only enunciated by the right that calls itself the right: it is also enunciated by another type of right that calls itself in another way.
Dozens of former ministers, senators, deputies, regional presidents and other PSOE officials have signed a manifesto against this Law together with right-wingers. Look. The Association for the Defense of the Values of the Transition against the project of democratic memory:
• We do not accept that the constitutional pact is the object of an unfair distortion that is alien to historical truth.
• Nor do we accept that December 1983 is considered a suspicious period, when the constitutional referendum, three general elections, two municipal elections and several regional elections had already been held.
• We are concerned that this suspicion is the result of a pact with Bildu, which has not yet formulated a criticism of terrorist crimes. (This is a lie, yes they have done it many times).
• Reconciliation was one of the keys to the Transition and this was enshrined in the Constitution.
• We demand that the Government, its President and those responsible for the parliamentary groups reconsider the bill for Democratic Memory based on consensus for the good of our coexistence and the future of our democracy.
The maximum champions of the regime of 78, who are from the PSOE, against any element, no matter how timid, that supposes any minimal crack in an official account of the transition that equates victims and executioners, democrats and fascists and that links the idea of reconciliation to the idea of forgetting and not repairing.
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