The Spanish government plans to make it illegal to glorify the regime of former dictator General Francisco Franco as part of a reform of the country's criminal code, the Socialist Party said today.
Franco, who ruled Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975, ordered the execution or imprisonment of tens of thousands of his enemies, while as many as 500,000 people died in the preceding civil war. His nationalist legacy still divides Spain and looms large over its political system.
"In a democracy you don't pay tribute to dictators or tyrants," parliamentary spokeswoman Adriana Lastra said.
She did not spell out what would constitute "glorification".
The government also aims to exhume the bodies of Franco's victims buried in mass graves and remove any Francoist symbols still on display in public places, Lastra said. In recent years, many street names commemorating Franco and his allies have been changed and public statues removed.
Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, whose left-wing coalition government came to power in January, made addressing the legacy of the dictatorship a pillar of his electoral campaign.
In October, his caretaker government removed the former dictator's remains from an imposing state mausoleum where he was buried in 1975 and transferred them to a small private cemetery, provoking mixed reactions from across the political spectrum.
The far-right Vox party, which strongly opposed Franco's exhumation, dismissed the proposed legal reform as a pretext for shutting down free speech.
"With the excuse of 'glorifying Francoism' they will shut down the media, foundations, associations and they will make political parties illegal as they see fit," a twitter account associated to the party said following Lastra's comments.
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Whoever gave the last comment a negative vote, shame on you Sir
You seem to forget that during and after WW2, Spain was a haven for people fleeing from certain death of Nazi atrocities or allied airmen or escaped prisioners of war attempting to return to their home countries. Not even Vichy France was safe for these people. And people still continue to criticise Franco.
@Bert: I am well familiar with them. But he went into exile at the end of the Civil War and never returned. He died in Paris in 1946. We are talking here about Franco’s dictatorship after, I repeat ‘after’, the Civil War ended and which lasted until his death in 1975. Nearly 40 long years!
S.O. : Largo Caballero - read his quotes and speeches
@Bert: as far as I know Spain doesn’t pay tribute to any of those you name. And we aren’t talking about the Civil War here (there were atrocities on all sides during the war) but to the almost 40 years of dictatorship that followed. Out of interest did you live in Spain at any time during that period, i.e, before 1975? I did, for many years.
Quote "In a democracy, you don't pay tribute to dictators or tyrants”. S.O. My question remains the same. They (PSOE) still can’t get over that they were on the losing side even though they were the main cause that there was civil unrest which lead to a subsecuent civil war.
@Bert: What have all those others to do with Spain? They are talking about making it illegal to glorify a Spanish dictator, just as Germany bans glorification of Hitler.
Should we presume that the same law will apply to such people as Chavez, Maduro, Castro, Che, Mao, Stalin etc, not to mention half of African and Middle Eastern leaders ?