Faced with the so-called "wall of Spain", where 2,238 people were shot to death after the Civil War in Paterna (Valencia), two ministers of the socialist Government, Félix Bolaños, head of the Presidency and Justice, and Diana Morant, of Science and Universities, have attacked this Tuesday against “the whitewashing of Francoism” pursued by the PP and Vox. That is the ultimate purpose, as both have highlighted, of the recent bill defended by the right-wing and far-right formations, partners in the Valencian Generalitat, which repeals the autonomous norm of Democratic Memory. The taking into consideration of this controversial proposal, which is called the Law of Concord, in line with initiatives of other governments of the same political sign, such as that of Castilla y León, is celebrated this Wednesday in the Valencian Cortes.
“It is a law that is a law of laundering Francoism; They have assumed the Francoist story of history. This Community is governed by a party aligned with the ideology of Vox. It whitewashes the dictatorship and equates the victims with their murderers,” said Morant, the new general secretary of the PSPV-PSOE, surrounded by numerous socialist militants. I am not going to call it the law of concord, because it is too nice a word to define so much evil that there is in that law. The law that will be discussed tomorrow attempts to whitewash Francoism and the dictatorship. For this reason, from the Government we are going to use all resources to stop this law of infamy,” Bolaños stated, in reference to a possible unconstitutionality appeal, among other options.
The choice of the “wall of Spain”, very close to the Paterna cemetery, where the majority of those shot on the wall were buried in common graves, has a special symbolism, two days after April 14, the day on which it was proclaimed the Second Republic in 1931. It is the second place where there were the most executions after the war in Spain, after the Eastern Cemetery in Madrid. 2,238 people from 191 towns in the Valencian Community and 60 other Spanish municipalities who died for being poor, farmers, socialists, for defending democracy, the two ministers have agreed. Both have also stressed that the Historical Memory law of 2007, and the Democratic Memory law that replaced it in 2022, arrived late, but it was an act of justice to compensate the victims.
Starting at 7:30 p.m., the political delegation traveled the path of several hundred meters that separates the cemetery from the wall that served as a wall in a section known as El Terrer. “The road of blood, as it was called,” recalled the mayor of Paterna, the socialist Juan Antonio Segredo, who previously showed the ministers the almost completed works in the cemetery of the “memorial for all the victims.”
“We are here to thank and recognize all those who have been working for so many years to repair the victims, the associations, the historians, the anthropologists, the family members,” Morant continued. In the Valencian Community, 1,900 remains have been recovered, but only 208 have been identified by DNA, the minister noted.
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Bolaños has insisted that exhuming the remains of a shot relative, lost in a mass grave, identifying him and burying him is not a question of ideology, but of humanity. In this sense, he has defended the Democratic Memory law that he postulated “in accordance with the international criteria of humanitarian law” and as a mirror of the resolutions of the UN or the European Parliament.