The exhibition dedicated to the Cazgamuros Valley that has also solved the United Left. In addition to the protests of a dozen Spanish Eurodiputados, the party now claims in a letter sent to the Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, who takes action on the matter and demands the institution that presides over Roberta Metsola “suspend” the exhibition and “not authorize anything similar” in the future. The brief is sent by the IU parliamentary spokesman, Enrique Santiago, and in it argues that the exhibition “contravenes the Democratic Memory Law”, having as its end the “exaltation of a dictatorial regime that caused the suffering and repression of thousands of people.”
The norm, “expressly prohibits” the public acts of exaltation of the Francoist dictatorship and “reinforces the institutional duty to preserve a memory based on the dignity of the victims,” recalls the deputy. Santiago also warns that the sample – in which the Cuegamuros Valley appears called as the fallen, its name until the approval of the law – goes against article 2 of the Treaty of the European Union that establishes as the foundational principles of the Union respect for human dignity, democracy, equality, the rule of law and fundamental rights.
The exhibition has been inaugurated in the same week of July 18, date that commemorates the beginning of the coup d’etat that began the civil war. Under the title , Among the exposed panels, it can be read that the “Valley of the Fallen” took almost 20 years to be built and a total of 2,000 prisoners worked “voluntary in the works hosting an advantageous system of redemption of penalties for work.” Santiago denounces that the text makes a comparison between free and prisoners and “denies their status as political prisoners” to the victims of Franco’s repression who were subjected to prison sentences already forced labor.
“The Co -gamuros Valley constitutes a symbol of the dictatorship and suffering of thousands of reprisals, and the use of the name ‘Valley of the Fallen’ in the poster attached to the invitation, instead of its official denomination, ‘Valley of Colagamuros’, it constitutes in itself an act of revisionism and exaltation of the Francoist past and a symbolic violation of the law of democratic memory that modified its democratic memory that modified its democratic memory Name, ”recalls the parliamentary spokesman of IU and leader of the PCE.
In his opinion, the exhibition is a “revictimization” of the many victims of the Francoist dictatorship that were subjected to forced labor and extermination conditions in the works carried out in the Co -Camuros Valley. “An ignominy of these characteristics is comparable only to the fact that the Neonazi Alternative Political Party for Germany (AFD) had organized an exhibition on the Nazis extermination fields, qualifying them from workplaces,” says Santiago.
“We consider it essential that in his status as Minister of Democratic Memory, he is interested in this matter to express to the Presidency of the European Parliament the incompatibility between respect for the foundational principles of the Union and this exhibition whose purpose is to bleach the authoritarian and repressive regime of Franco, to deny the status of victims of Francoism to the people who suffered said repression and exalt the fascism,” adds the letter.
Despite the controversy, the European Parliament has already claimed this week that these types of decisions do not depend on Metsola, but on the so -called Questors, who are responsible for validating the cultural acts (with European money) that each Eurodiput has the right to organize up to two times for each mandate.
There are the remains of more than 33,800 people, including hundreds of Republicans who were extracted from common graves to be transferred there without the consent of their families.
