Ortega Smith refuses to retract his fallacies about the Thirteen Roses

Javier Ortega Smith, secretary general of Vox, has put too many buts in the conciliation act that this Friday gathered in the Court of First Instance number 40 of Madrid to the leader of the extreme right - who has avoided going in person and has sent a lawyer in his name—, the association 13 Rosas de Asturias and the nephews of Dolores Conesa, one of the young women shot in the walls of the Almudena cemetery on August 5, 1939. The ultra formation politician has refused to publicly retract the fallacies and disqualifications he poured on television over the Thirteen Roses, when he said they had "tortured, murdered and violated vilely." "They committed brutal crimes in the Czechs," he said during an interview on TVE, despite the fact that the Franco regime's own documentation denies it.

The parties were scheduled at 9.00 on Friday, but Ortega Smith has avoided going to court personally. Instead, a lawyer has appeared to speak on his behalf. It was then that the lawyer of the Administration has offered both parties a pact. The complainants withdrew two of their demands (that the leader had to pay compensation of 10,000 euros that was to be donated to a group related to historical memory and that was sentenced to exhumation of victims of the Civil War and the dictatorship) and In return, the secretary general of Vox apologized publicly. An option that, at first, the plaintiffs have seen with good eyes, but which they have later rejected.

"I wanted to introduce several buts," said Eduardo Ranz, lawyer for the complainants. According to the ultra formation, they only wanted to add "nuances" to the brief and ensure that the Thirteen Roses belonged to an organization where they had "been tortured, murdered and violated vilely." "The offense was maintained," said the lawyer, who announced that they will now file a complaint against Ortega Smith before the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court for slander and serious insults with publicity.

MORE INFORMATION

• Relatives of the Thirteen Roses ask that Ortega Smith be condemned to exhume victims of the Civil War

The Thirteen Roses, most militants of the Unified Socialist Youth (JSU), were convicted in a war council for the generic accusation of "joining the rebellion." There is no trace of the crimes attributed to them by the Vox politician. According to Carlos Fonseca, author of the book Thirteen Red Roses , only some of the 13 women were in the front during the war and "the majority worked in the rearguard" doing work, for example, in hospitals. Just 48 hours after the verdict, they were shot at dawn on August 5, 1939 in the Almudena cemetery in Madrid. Only five were of legal age.