The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, repeats his move in the renowned Cuelgamuros Valley. He already did it before general elections on November 10, 2019, when he carried out his greatest coup by appealing to the Historical Memory Law with the exhumation of Francisco Franco on October 24, and he repeated it in April of last year, in the process of voting for municipal and regional, with the same maneuver in the case of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, whose family had requested a transfer that was orchestrated by the Executive. It happened again on June 12, on that occasion at the gates of the general elections of July 23, when, after six months of preparation and various legal obstacles, the works began to enable the crypts of the Basilica and thus begin the exhumations claimed by 160 families.
And it has been precisely these works that have led Sánchez to another effective move in the face of an electoral scenario that begins on the 21st with the appointment with the polls in the Basque Country, which will be followed by the Catalan elections on May 12 and will close the elections European elections on June 9, events in which the PSOE could fall to historic lows in the Basque Country and Europe, and be left without governing the Generalitat of Catalonia, despite the foreseeable victory of Salvador Illa.
Pedro Sánchez, who recently landed from Qatar, visited early yesterday the Chapel of the Sepulcher of the Cuelgamuros Valley, where the specialists who search and analyze the remains in the ossuaries of the Valley of the Fallen work. In the space adjacent to the High Altar, work is being carried out for the exhumations that those 160 families have requested following the refusal of the 271 – two more since yesterday – represented by the Association for the Defense of the Valley of the Fallen (ADVC). .
Furthermore, the political tension between PSOE and the PP has worsened in recent weeks due to issues such as the amnesty law and especially the “Koldo case”, which affects several ministries and former socialist autonomous governments (including that of the current head of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres), while the socialists focus their attacks on the popular ones for the alleged tax fraud of the boyfriend of the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
With this scenario, the Democratic Memory Law has become one of the star topics these days in the press conferences of socialist leaders of the Federal Executive of the PSOE, the Government and the parliamentary group in Congress, with their corresponding replicas from the PP by Alberto Núñez Feijóo or Borja Sémper.
All this after Ángel Víctor Torres announced on Monday that the Government will take to the Constitutional Court the law approved in Aragon by PP and Vox that repeals the state rule if the regional Executive does not agree to modify it.
Furthermore, he warned that the Government will act in the same way with the so-called “concord” law proposals presented in Castilla y León and the Valencian Community if they are approved.
Yesterday, the Government increased its pressure by reporting that it will take its offensive against the memory laws of the autonomous governments of PP and Vox to the United Nations, the European Parliament and the Council of Europe.
And the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, finished off the week with his surprise visit to learn on the ground about the tasks for the recovery and identification of the victims of Franco's regime claimed by their families.
With all this, the eagerness of the Government and the PSOE to resort to democratic memory to highlight the action of the Executive and to criticize the PP, which they accuse of having assumed the “postulates” of Vox on this matter in some of the autonomous communities where both parties govern in coalition.
Sources from Ferraz tell Efe that they will continue to bring up this issue “until the PP stops attacking the memory and victims” of Francoism.
For his part, the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has reproached the Government and the PSOE for the fact that Francoism is once again the subject of debate before an electoral campaign.
The truth is that democratic memory has returned to the political arena at the start of the campaign for the Basque elections, which officially began at midnight yesterday, and will continue to have a media presence for some time.
In fact, the Government plans to approve in the Council of Ministers on April 23 the creation of three working commissions provided for in the Democratic Memory Law, among them one to study possible violations of human rights between 1978 and 1983, coinciding with the beginning of the Government of Felipe González.