A memorial association has demanded that the Secretary of State for Democratic Memory location and transfer to the Cuelgamuros Valley of the mortal remains of the president’s grandfather of the Government, Pedro Sánchez.
Mateo Pérez Castejón Díaz, maternal grandfather of the current tenant of La Moncloa, was buried on November 8, 1973 in Almudena, one day after his death. when the president was then two years old.
After occupying a temporary grave for ten years, the remains of a person with the same name –without the Castejón that the family took offas journalistic sources point out – were transferred to the common ossuary in the Madrid cemetery on March 28, 1984an outcome that Ok Diario has investigated and published.
“With due dignity”
Based on this data, the Raíces Historical Memory Association has sent this demand so that the maternal grandfather of the PSOE leader “rest eternally and with due dignity inside” of the Basilica of “also identified as Valley of the Fallen.”
The petitioners suggest in their brief that “we understand that a search for his mortal remains will be necessary, for which he must make himself available for this work.” the genetic identification team that is currently in the Valley», with the coroner Francisco Exteberria at the helm.
“We request that this petition be forwarded to the President of the Government himself and his family in case they have anything to allege, in the belief that they will want to give your ancestor his due eternal rest in an environment like no other such as the Basílica del Valle, and even more so after the reform project in progress and its new symbology”, they propose in reference to the design recently chosen to undertake the “resignification” of the complex.
Legionary of the XV Flag
The “foundation” of this request is, according to the explanations of the Raíces association, that Pedro Sánchez’s maternal grandfather “was first a soldier of the Second Republic during the Spanish Civil War who enlisted at the age of 16to later defect to the so-called national Army, where He was in the toughest combats of his final phase as a legionnaire of the XV Flag of The Legion, after a period of military training in Talavera de La Reina.
Mateo Pérez “had the highest decorations for military valor and also suffered a criminal procedure that was finally archived but that caused him to spend three years in Zaragoza prison as a preventive prisonerwhere he showed signs of adhesion to national Spain and participation in its educational projects, with religious studies” and “in the prison choir”according to the trajectory recorded by the association.
This memorial entity considers that his figure “assumes all the contradictions and vicissitudes of the Civil War, and due to the relationship of the promoter of the Democratic Memory Lawhis grandson, would be a tribute to reconciliation and Democratic Memory.
Repair statement
The promoters of the initiative go beyond a new reburial in the Valley, because they request “also a declaration of reparation of the memory of the president’s grandfather of the Government, for having suffered a desertion process in republican Spain in 1938which can be located in the Military Historical Service, specifically in the file identified as Territorial Military Court 1 | Series: Ordinary Causes | Valencia, 1938 | Reference: Summary 2294, Box 16881, Order 14, which makes it possible to clarify under what conditions and under what premises he was the victim of a criminal procedure without respect for his fundamental human rights.
The Raíces Historical Memory Association has participated in various appeals before the Justice to obtain the declaration as an Asset of Cultural Interest (BIC) of the Valley of the Fallen, the protection of the work of Juan de Ávalos in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, for the withdrawal of the names of the Indalecio Prieto boulevard and Francisco Largo Caballero avenue in Madrid and against the withdrawal of the Gold Medal for Merit in Work from Francisco Franco.