The Partido Popular in Palma have asked the town hall to "immediately" suspend the process for the demolition of the sa Feixina park monument. The PP say that there should be a suspension until a final decision is taken by the Council of Majorca's heritage commission. It has reopened the case following an appeal by the group which wishes to save the monument.
At yesterday's council meeting the PP raised the issue of protection of what they describe as an "important architectural and heritage element in Palma". It was in fact the eighth time that the PP have sought to block the demolition by bringing it up at a full council session. And whenever it is debated, representatives of a number of associations in favour of keeping the monument always turn up.
The case for preservation was made by the former PSOE deputy to the national Congress, Carlos Zayas. He was among the first deputies of the new democratic era after Franco's death and he observed that despite all that had to be endured (by him personally and others) during the Franco period, he was not in favour of the monument disappearing.
The current administration in Palma does of course feature PSOE, and it is headed by a PSOE mayor, José Hila. The town hall's decision to demolish the monument was taken because the administration considers it to be a symbol of Francoism.
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Following on from Sean Dobson's point. The memorial had its Franco style carvings and it was rededicated to democracy in 2010 under the 2007 Law of Historic Memory. It was a memorial to over 350 seamen drowned when the Nationalist cruiser Baleeres was sunk by Republican planes in March 1938. Two British ships, HMS Kempenfelt and HMS Boreas rescued the remaining 435 sailors. So the Socialists want to remove a memorial to democracy...
In Nuremberg, Germany, they have preserved the ruins of the Nazi rally grounds and the museum reminds people of the country's dark past. If a country white washes its past, it doesn't have much of a future.
Then there wouldn´t be very many monuments left for people to admire, would there ? Evil, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder. And it´s a good thing the italian public were and are a bit more grown up about, some very beautiful, monuments built in Mussolini´s memory. And not lets forget about Cromwell´s, standing in front of the mother of all parliaments ( my apologies to the people of Leon, Spain ).
Keeping a monument associated with an evil human being is a good way to remind people of that evil - as suggested below by someone else it could be used as a place to remember all the deaths and atrocities. I appreciate that there are still people in Spain who think Franco was the best thing since sliced bread, similarly there are people who deny Hitler's Holocaust ever happened, but you can just stick them in the pot with the Flat Earth Society, the anti-evolution lobby, or the people who think the American moon landings were fabricated.
Surely it must be possible to move it and re-dedicate it to all those who died in the civil war and in the years that followed.?