The Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, has created a commission to undertake the delicate task of applying the Democratic Memory Law within the Armed Forces, one of whose provisions orders the review "ex officio" of the decorations and military rewards granted to the heads of the Franco dictatorship.
This review will include the Gran Cruz Laureada de San Fernando, the main Spanish military decoration, which Franco awarded himself at the end of the Civil War and won at the Victory parade held in Madrid in May 1939.
Article 40 of the Democratic Memory Law, which entered into force on October 21, orders the different administrations to adopt the appropriate measures “to review ex officio or withdraw the granting of recognitions, honors and distinctions […] that result manifestly incompatible with democratic values and fundamental rights and freedoms, that entail exaltation or exaltation of the military uprising, the war or the dictatorship or that had been granted due to having been part of the repressive apparatus of the Franco dictatorship”.
More information
The emotion of the victims of Francoism in their first great State tribute: "My heart is full"
The Ministry of Labor, dependent on Vice President Yolanda Díaz, has already initiated the file to remove the dictator and other high-ranking Francoists from the Medal of Merit for Work.
In the Ministry of Defense, however, the issue is highly sensitive, because, beyond the figure of Franco, family sagas abound in the Armed Forces and many active commanders are direct descendants of those who fought on the rebel side. in the Civil War.
For this reason, Minister Margarita Robles has chosen to cool down the matter by creating a commission that is in charge of studying all the implications of the new law.
Coinciding with the Day of Remembrance and Tribute to all the victims of the military coup, the war and the dictatorship, which is celebrated on October 31, the Official Defense Bulletin (BOD) published this Monday the ministerial order creating the Monitoring Committee, within the Department of Defense, for the study, planning and coordination of actions arising from the Democratic Memory Law.
Said Committee will be chaired by the Undersecretary of Defense, Adoración Mateos, and the three armies will be represented in it, through the second chiefs of the Land, Air and Navy General Staff.
Article 42 of the same law states that the withdrawal of decorations may be carried out, posthumously, when "it is proven that the beneficiary, before or after the award, due to having been part of the apparatus of repression of the dictatorship Francoist, had carried out acts or observed behavior manifestly incompatible with democratic values and the guiding principles for the protection of human rights, as well as with the requirements for their granting.
It will not be a brief or simple process, since the withdrawal "will require the processing of an adversarial procedure, which can only be initiated ex officio and at the initiative of the head of the competent department [of the Defense Minister] and will be instructed and resolved by the competent bodies to process the concession procedures.
In the case of the Laureate of San Fernando, the instruction of the procedure to award the Grand Cross (and, therefore, to withdraw it from Franco) is the responsibility of the chief of the Defense Staff and the chiefs of the three armies and its concession (and revocation) corresponds to the King, through a royal decree agreed upon by the Council of Ministers.
According to the dictator's military file, Franco insistently requested the Laureate for his performance in the Moroccan War in 1916, but his comrades-in-arms denied it because, having been one of the first wounded officers, he was immediately removed from the battlefield and could not carry out the heroic deeds that he intended.
Despite this, his coffin was covered with the emblem of the order when his remains were transferred from the Valley of the Fallen to the Mingorrubio cemetery (Madrid) in 2019.
The revision of decorations does not affect only Franco.
The Laureate was also received by Generals Emilio Mola and Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, whose remains will be removed from the Basilica of La Macarena in Seville in application of the Historical Memory Law, among others.
There is, however, no deadline to proceed with the withdrawal of the medals and the commission created by Defense has an indefinite duration, so its conclusions could be delayed.
According to the ministerial order, the objective of the commission will be "to comply with the provisions in patrimonial matters, access and consultation of the documentation in its files and, in general, the processing of the administrative procedures that proceed in application" of the Law of Democratic Memory.
Although the preamble emphasizes access to the archives, this is actually the least controversial part of the law, since Robles opened all the documentation prior to the 1968 Official Secrets Law to investigators;
Another thing is that the military archives have the means to catalog and describe their entire documentary collection.
More tricky may be the elimination, ordered by law, of those names of military centers or units that exalt figures from the rebel side: the Legion has a flag called Millán-Astray and another Comandante Franco, in homage to the two founders of the Third;
while the Air Force has a Kindelán Chair, in memory of the founder of the Air Force and head of Franco's Air Force during the war.
In addition, the Alcázar of Toledo, current headquarters of the Army Museum, houses in its crypt the remains of Generals José Moscardó (a Laureate in turn) and Jaime Milans del Bosch, leader of 23-F, in his capacity as defenders of the fortress during the Civil War.
The Law of Memory states that the remains "of leaders of the 1936 military coup may not be or remain buried in a pre-eminent place of public access, other than a cemetery."
Although the crypt of the Alcázar is not open to the public, several associations have requested that the remains of both soldiers be removed.
Subscribe to continue reading
read without limits
Keep reading
I'm already a subscriber