Ángel Víctor Torres, Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, affected these days by the scandal of the case of corruption of the former advisor of José Luis Ábalos – the administration under the mandate of the then Canarian president was the one that invoiced the most to the “Koldo plot” – has made some statements that put back on the table pending objectives of the Government of Pedro Sánchez based on the Democratic Memory Law.
Firstly, Torres has marked the way out of the Francisco Franco National Foundation (FNFF), whose planned illegalization has been in the air – and announced – for years, although the call for elections last July paralyzed the reforms in march to promote the putting offside of organizations that do “apology for the dictatorship”among them the FNFF, a measure contained in the regulations in force since October 2022.
The minister was questioned about the complexity of this issue, because a reform of the Foundations Law. «What has to be done will have to be done, but there is no doubt that there is no room for a foundation of someone who was a proven dictator and who practiced a policy of extermination for decades of people's freedom and more serious issues,” Torres said at a Europa Press news event.
According to the head of Democratic Memory, three commissions and a decree of the Council of Ministers must be approved to finally illegalize the Francisco Franco Foundation, but avoided giving dates for this illegalization to materialize, although “The big push (of the law) is taking place in 2024.”
The FNFF deplores these statements. “The minister does not seem concerned by the allusions that implicate him, according to some media, in corruption related to the illicit trafficking of masks,” says Juan Chicharro, its executive president. “He is concerned about our illegalization, and asks why Francisco Franco must maintain a foundation”. The Marine Corps general in reserve appeals to “ideological freedom” and “equality before the law” of the Spanish people included in the Constitution, while accusing Torres of being “sectarian” and “totalitarian like the Democratic Memory Law, whose constitutionality is being appealed before the Constitutional Court.” “A norm that imposes a single truth on us, its own, by law: pure totalitarianism.”
The president of the FNFF appeals to “ideological freedom” and the “equality before the law” of Spaniards included in the Constitution
The president of the Franco Foundation “would advise” the minister “to spend his time better and dedicate himself to defending his personal integrity and that of his party in the face of everything we are seeing – they are not coming out very well – and leave those of us who are in peace. we count how there was a time in Spain where the only concern was the well-being of the Spanish people and not the safeguarding of partisan and personal interests.
Another pending account of Moncloa is the renamed Valley of the Fallen, Ángel Víctor Torres explained that the exhumations have been carried out since last June 12: «There are 33,000 people there, their remains, after 40 years, 50 years, arrived in boxes, shared boxes if they came from one side, individual boxes if they came from the other., and that is what society also has to know. “We are going to take the pertinent steps,” he said in reference to the repeated promise to give a different vision to the space of the Guadarrama mountain range. To do this, the Government will open possibilities for a study in which there are proposals from experts. “But in any case it must be a place that claims the opposite of what it claimed for 50 years,” Torres pointed out.
Regarding the exhumations of José Moscardó and Jaime Milans del Bosch from the Alcázar of Toledo, which was also considered at the time, he assured that “there are steps” that have occurred, but that more actions are being handled from different parts of Spain for the withdrawal of the names of some streetsa classic in matters of Historical Memory.
“Stop the decline” of the Valley of the Fallen, more complicated without BIC declaration
The Association for the Defense of the Valley of the Fallen (ADVC), Vox and the Association for Reconciliation and Historical Truth are awaiting the conclusion of the lawsuit for the initiation of the procedure to declare the Cuelgamuros Valley an Asset of Cultural Interest (BIC). The Community of Madrid ignores it because it considers that it is not its responsibility, but that of the State, but the Superior Court of Justice (TSJ) of Madrid asked it to reason its refusal. For its defenders, the entire Valley of the Fallen “is not part of the National Heritage”, but rather “is an asset whose ownership belongs to the Foundation of the Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos”, which is why the regional government It is capable of “stopping its decline.”