The PSOE calls on the mayoral candidates in the municipal elections on May 28 to include in their electoral programs measures to eliminate vestiges of the Franco dictatorship and also for the location and exhumation of victims. Specifically, it asks to pay special attention to the street map and the name of public centers.
This is stated in the basic document on which the municipal framework program will be drawn up. This document serves as a guide to prepare the electoral programs in the more than 7,500 localities where the PSOE will present a candidacy.
The final version of the framework program will be approved at the Municipal Convention that the party will hold between April 14 and 16 in Valencia, which will be attended by the PSOE general secretary, Pedro Sánchez and the other members of the party leadership, together with the candidates for the main mayors of the country.
In this sense, the PSOE encourages its candidates to promote the necessary actions, in collaboration with the rest of the administrations, for the location and exhumation of victims of the coup d’état of 1936, the Civil War (1936-1939) and the subsequent Franco dictatorship.
Dissemination of places of Memory
Likewise, they indicate that they will promote the elimination or withdrawal of vestiges that exalt the coup, the dictatorship or exalt its protagonists. In this sense, they ask to pay special attention to the street map and the names of public centers, as well as the granting of recognitions, honors and distinctions to them.
This series of measures is in line with what is established in the Democratic Memory Law, which came into force last October, although many of its points are still pending development. The norm establishes, for example, the category of ‘place of memory’ as immovable spaces or places in which events of singular historical or symbolic relevance have been developed due to their repercussion in the collective memory, as indicated in the text of the law.
Along these lines, the PSOE’s framework program calls for protecting these places of Democratic Memory and disseminating their meaning “because of their connection to the struggle of Spanish citizens for their rights and freedoms or the repression and violence against the population for their resistance to the coup of State or the dictatorship”, indicates the text, which uses the same wording of the Memory Law.
Renew the municipal archives
The PSOE is also going to promote the renewal of the municipal historical archives, “as a source of our historical memory”, according to what they say.
Finally, they point out that they are going to promote educational activities and programs so that schoolchildren learn about the history and Spanish Democratic Memory, as well as the fight for democratic values and freedoms.
In the PSOE they consider it necessary to promote these actions in their electoral programs for the 28M because in the towns and cities of the country “some scars” of the “traumatic” past of Spain still remain. Thus they consider that knowledge of the recent past contributes to consolidating coexistence and protects against the repetition of “mistakes from the past”.
Thus the PSOE speaks of “municipalities with memory” which, in its opinion, are key in the recognition of those who suffered persecution or violence for their ideas and the defense of democracy as a result of the coup d’état of 1936, the war and the dictatorship. Thus, they stress that by preserving the collective memory “of the disasters of war” it will prevent human rights violations from recurring.
