The headquarters of the Presidency of the Community of Madrid will no longer be a place of democratic memory, at least until the National Court rules on the merits of the appeal it presented. The magistrates have responded to the request of the Community of Madrid and have agreed to provisionally suspend said agreement while they study the allegations presented by the lawyers of the central and regional Executives. From Puerta del Sol they have celebrated the decision, considering that it stops Sánchez’s “sectarianism.”
The agreement refers in its preamble to the General Directorate of Security to refer to the administrative body that “was one of the main tools of control and political repression” during the dictatorship. The text points to the “Puerta del Sol building” as a “somber reminder of the horrors,” which was “a symbol of the repression of the Franco regime, where thousands of people were detained, interrogated and subjected to torture for political and ideological reasons.”
. In their appeal, Díaz Ayuso’s team insisted that the building is the current headquarters of the Madrid Presidency and that, in their opinion, the agreement of Sánchez’s Executive could mean “damage to its institutional image.” To do so, it relied on the 1983 law of the Government and Administration of the Community of Madrid, which establishes that it has the obligation to “protect and preserve,” among others, “the institutional image, meaning and current use of the headquarters of the Presidency of the Community of Madrid.”
The National Court understands that, in effect, the agreement of the Secretariat of State for Democratic Memory “may affect to a greater or lesser extent or intensity, in a negative sense, the aforementioned institutional image that the Community has the legal obligation to preserve.” In the judicial resolution, to which EL PAÍS has had access, the magistrates explain that, although “it cannot be stated categorically that the image of the headquarters of the Presidency of the Community of Madrid may suffer irreversible damage”, it can be said that “it is not possible to categorically deny said negative impact.” From this perspective, and given the possibility of generating “an adverse effect on the institutional image” of the Díaz Ayuso Government, the court sees it as “pertinent” to adopt the requested precautionary measure.
Furthermore, it states that the declaration of a place of democratic memory can “affect to a more or less intense extent” the activities carried out in the building. In his opinion, the fact that “such intense and, at the same time, conflicting interests” converge in the same physical space, advises that the agreement be suspended on a precautionary basis because, otherwise, “the legitimate purpose of the appeal” presented by the Government of Díaz Ayuso could be undermined. Finally, the magistrates recall that the Constitutional Court is pending a ruling on the conflict of powers regarding the declaration of the Post Office as a place of democratic memory, which also “endorses the suspension requested by the autonomous community.”
The Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Local Administration and spokesman for the Madrid Executive, Miguel Ángel García Martín, applauded this Monday the action of the National Court “in the face of the sectarianism of the Government.” “The courts have ruled in favor of the Community of Madrid in its defense of the Real Casa de Correos as a space of freedom and as a common home for all Madrid residents and all Spaniards,” he stated. The Madrid Presidency has defended that the building has 250 years of history and has been “completely resignified” since it was named the institutional headquarters of the regional Executive 40 years ago.
The decision of the First Section of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber has been adopted with a vote against, that of the magistrate Luis Moya, who maintains that “when remembering negative events in the history of Spain, the aim is not to detract from other values that may be present in the place (…) nor to make a judgment of disvalue of the government action of the autonomous institutions.”
