The Government studies whether Almeida's tribute to Millán Astray violated the law

A democratic State would not have to oblige by law public administrations, for example, a city council, not to defend the Civil War, the dictatorship, or fascism.

The will to eliminate from the street or from his monuments any acknowledgment of those who attacked the community should come as standard in a public servant.

In Spain, almost 44 years after the approval of the Constitution, this is not the case and the Cortes Generales have had to approve a rule that legally requires it and that establishes sanctions for eventual rebellious.

The legal team of the Secretary of State for Democratic Memory studies the tribute that the mayor of the capital, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, of the PP, has just paid in a public act to General Millán Astray, an admirer of Franco, Hitler and Mussolini,

01:50

Almeida claims Millán Astray street in Madrid

In a speech read, that is to say, prepared, Martínez-Almeida recalled this Tuesday, proudly, that the Francoist general has a street in his honor in the city of which he is mayor.

The honoree was Franco's press and propaganda chief, whom he described as "God's messenger as a driver for the liberation and aggrandizement of Spain."

He encouraged his subordinates to threaten foreign journalists with execution and, among other unfortunate episodes, he went down in history for his confrontation, in 1936, with the then rector of the University of Salamanca.

Historian Paul Preston remembers it this way: “While Millán Astray sank into a homicidal delirium, Miguel de Unamuno resisted firmly, pointing out the necrophiliac folly of the motto 'Long live death!'

Millán Astray exclaimed: 'Death to the intellectuals!'

In 2017, the boyfriend of death lost that street in Madrid.

The City Council, then chaired by Manuela Carmena, decided to deliver it to the memory of Justa Freire, a republican teacher who dedicated her life to reducing inequalities through education and who was imprisoned by the Franco regime.

In August of last year, Millán Astray recovered the road thanks to the will of the Consistory and the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid, which also pardoned the Blue Division road, in the first case, arguing that the general had not participated directly in the coup of 1936 and, in the second, that the Spaniards who fought on the side of the Nazis did so in World War II, that is, they were not affected by the current historical memory law, that of 2007.

The new Democratic Memory Law, which entered into force on October 21, expressly defines as elements contrary to the norm "references in the street" to "the military uprising, the dictatorship, its leaders and participants in the repressive system" , as well as "the civil or military units of collaboration between the Franco regime and the Axis powers during the Second World War".

Article 38 considers "contrary to democratic memory" public acts that "involve personal or collective exaltation" of all of the above, and establishes that "the competent authorities" will bring them "to the attention of the Public Prosecutor" if they notice "facts that could be constitutive of a crime”.

Article 62 considers “very serious infraction” that the necessary measures are not adopted to avoid them,

General Francisco Franco with Millán Astray.

He received applause because there are still nostalgic, but by boasting in a public act of that street to the Francoist military, the mayor of Madrid has not only offended the relatives of the victims of the Civil War and the dictatorship, but also the democrat neighbors whose votes have served to place him where he is.

This recognition of Millán Astray occurs a few days after the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, defined the norm that makes explicit the obviousness that a democracy cannot honor the dictatorship as "an ideological law that reopens the grudges of the War Civil” and after he censored the transfer of the remains of Queipo de Llano from La Macarena in Seville.

But those who intend to clean up the street by eliminating any reference to Francoism do not feed resentment,

01:37

Alberto Núñez Feijóo: "It doesn't make sense to live on the income of what our grandparents did 80 years ago"

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