The Government announced this Friday that it will expand the training offer for teachers in democratic memory after the Executive of the Community of Madrid, has canceled one of those courses to understand, according to sources known to the decision process, which had a “political bias”. The Ministries of Education and Territorial Policy work in an agreement to ensure that teachers can access that training. “Today, when some regional governments are deliberately cutting in the training of teachers in memory,” said the commissioner for the celebration of the 50 years of Franco’s death, Carmina Gustán, “enable these experiences of construction of democratic citizenship is more important than ever.” “It is very simple. They are courses that encourage human rights, democratic freedoms and values through the knowledge of our recent past. No one should be against it,” he added.
In addition to Madrid, also the Valencian Community, also governed by the PP, has limited this type of initiatives. The Democratic Memory Law, of October 2022, establishes that “the Spanish education system will include among its ends the knowledge of the history and Spanish democratic memory and the struggle for democratic values and freedoms”, so that “the educational administrations will adopt the necessary measures so that in the initial and permanent training plans of the teachers, formations, scientific update, didactic and pedagogical Democratic memory. ” The Minister of Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres, that said law is “mandatory” throughout the national territory.
Historian Carmina Astarán, commissioner of the Executive for the organization of the acts for the 50th anniversary of Franco’s death, has announced the expansion of the training offer for teachers in Pamplona, during an ED meeting the educational network of memory. Vice President Navarra, Ana Ollo, has underlined the importance of collaboration between administrations and institutions so that education favors that “new generations are aware of what happened and not repeat again.” From the fort of San Cristóbal, ancient Francoist prison who lived, in 1938, -795 prisoners fled, but from them, 221 were executed-, the counselor has especially addressed young people. “I ask that when you return to your homes, you talk to your families, with your friends, and tell that what occurred here. It is necessary that you plant face with the memory and memory of the bulos, the false news and the denialist and revisionist policies of the extreme right,” he said. The Fort of San Cristóbal will be declared soon a place of memory.
The Program of the Memory Meeting has been inspired by the Bottles of La Libertad activity, which the Navarro Institute of Memory has been carrying out with students in the area and whose name is inspired by the bottles with which the victims of the fort of San Cristóbal, with its name inside. This Friday a group of young people has followed the route of the escapees of the former prison. Enrique Villareal, Drugshas intervened in the act with a musical participation.
Historians and the popularity of ‘youtubers’ of the extreme right that make the apology of Franco. The project Schools with memory He was born in 2016 promoted by history professors who detected in his students a knowledge deficit about that period. The work of the Navarro de la Memoria Institute has been recognized by the Council of Europe, but the treatment of Francoist repression in the classroom is very different according to the territory. The PP, which governs 11 autonomous communities, has joined Vox’s thesis that such content involves “indoctrination.”
