The democratic memory law, in the phase in which it was just a project, in November 2021, finally included a provision that made it easier for the PNV, Pedro Sánchez’s investiture partner, to resume an old demand: the recovery of a 1,309-acre property. square meters in Paris, a mansion near the Champs Elysées that today is one of the two headquarters of the Cervantes Institute in the French capital and that was seized from the Basque party, the formation alleged, for the Franco regime. An investigation by the Executive has concluded that in fact the Franco regime seized the property and now the State will pay the PNV a rent to maintain one of the two headquarters of the Cervantes Institute in the French capital there.
The ninth additional provision, titled “Properties and rights seized abroad”, established that the provisions provided for in the 1998 law approved by the Government of José María Aznar, of the PP, of restitution or compensation to political parties of assets and rights seized during the Civil War, “will apply to goods and rights obtained abroad” in execution of an agreement signed by Spain and France on January 25, 1939 “even when the property title of the Kingdom of Spain would have been attributed by administrative or judicial resolutions of foreign States.” And he added that, in addition to the beneficiaries provided for in the 1998 law, “the political parties will also be beneficiaries with respect to the assets that had belonged to natural or legal persons linked to said parties on a fiduciary basis or under any form of legal coverage supported by business or personal interposition agreements.”
On December 24, a royal decree law “by which urgent measures are adopted in economic, tax, transportation, and security matters” was published in the Official State Gazette, which included the attribution of ownership of the property located in Marceau Avenue from Paris to the PNV. The Cervantes Institute may continue to occupy it at least until December 31, 2030, paying a “market rent” from January 1, 2025. In addition, the Government will “compensate” the party “for the deprivation of the property located in Noyon (France), known as Hôtel de Mont Renaud” and another in Compans (France), called Ferme de I’Hôtel.
To reach the conclusion that the property had been seized by the Franco regime from the PNV, the Secretary of State for Democratic Memory commissioned an investigation into its ownership. The report, to which this newspaper has had access, recalls the adventures involved in purchasing that building and establishes “that the origin of the funds with which the initial purchase was paid was not from the Basque Government (which used the property), but that were collected and managed by the PNV.” These funds were “provided from Mexico in September 1936, when the Basque Government did not exist” and transferred to the then person in charge of the party’s finances, Heliodoro de la Torre Larrinaga. The first buyer of the property for 1,460,000 francs, in 1937, Marino de Gamboa, “acted as a front man for the PNV, of which he was a member.”
The documentation “corroborates”, according to the report, that, after the entry of German troops into Paris on June 14, 1940, the Gestapo took charge of the house on Avenue Marceau, giving the building to the Spanish (Franco) embassy. four days later, on June 18. In fact, the counselor of the Spanish embassy informed Madrid of the matter like this: “With reference to my dispatch today regarding the seizure of several of the red organizations existing in this capital, it is my duty to inform Your Excellency [Vuestra Excelencia] that the Basque Delegation located at number 11 Marceau Avenue has been occupied, in the registry verified by the official of this embassy, Mr. Pedro Urraca, in the presence of the Gestapo authorities.” Francoist police and Gestapo agent in France, was the one who interrogated and transported the former president of the Generalitat Lluís Companys to Spain after being arrested in August 1940, two months before being executed at Montjuic Castle.
The PNV has claimed ownership of the property, the current headquarters of the Cervantes Institute in Paris, on numerous occasions, until now, without success, inside and outside Spain. In January 2001, the Council of Ministers rejected his request for restitution. against him by understanding that “it was never seized in application of Franco’s law of political responsibilities and that its integration into the State Heritage [español] It was carried out by virtue of a judicial ruling” of a Parisian court. The party always argued that the French ruling (1943) on which the Supreme Court relied was carried out under the Nazi occupation and was produced thanks to the “connivance between the German occupation authorities and the Francoist Government, with pressure on the court in the prefabrication of the failure.” The Seine Court indicated in 1943 that the origin of the funds to acquire it were “false”, and came from “thefts or confiscations of the Spanish treasury”, but the researcher Jean-Claude Larronde maintained that they were from PNV militants residing in Mexico and that the party established a company, Finances et Enterprises, “with the purpose of transferring the property to avoid the confiscation of the property by Franco’s Spaniards.” This is the thesis that the Spanish Government now endorses to restore ownership of the property to the party.
