In a letter signed in 1962, a close collaborator of the Franco family confesses the strategy they have devised to discreetly transfer a public palace in A Coruña into the hands of the dictator. This is how he describes the operation designed around Casa Cornide to a high-ranking official of the Ministry of Finance. He refers to the head of state as "Your Excellency" and his wife as "the Lady":
"Today is finally the deadline for the auction of the famous house that Your Excellency so desired. Today the plenary session [of the City Council] also meets to award it to a private individual and he will sell it to the Lady. This is how we have explained it to His Excellency because it is the best formula, since in this way there is no adjudication of assets that belonged to the State to the Caudillo himself. The gentlemen are delighted because they have achieved the desire to be able to have a house in La Coruña, so that when the Lady has to move there will be no need to open the Pazo de Meirás that causes so much inconvenience, because of how large this residence is and the number of servants and servants that are needed".
Everything happened as described in this letter collected in the report prepared by the historian Emilio Grandío on behalf of the City Council of A Coruña. That "individual" who acted as a front in the auction is the businessman Pedro Barrié de la Maza, founder of Banco Pastor (today absorbed by Banco Santander) and of the electricity company Unión Fenosa (acquired by Naturgy). In the bidding he paid 305,000 pesetas for Casa Cornide, a building of the Ministry of Education that had been transferred to the City Council. Three days later, he sold it to Carmen Polo for only 25,000 pesetas.
For more than six decades, the Franco family has enjoyed this historic mansion built in the nineteenth century in the Old City of A Coruña. In September 2019, two months after the State took the recovery of the Pazo de Meirás to court, the municipal corporation of A Coruña approved filing a lawsuit in court to revert the mansion to public heritage. The BNG's proposal was unanimously supported by the PSOE, PP, Marea Atlántica and Ciudadanos.
The first step taken by the government of the socialist Inés Rey was to commission a historical report and a legal report, and request the Xunta to protect it as an Asset of Cultural Interest (BIC). This last measure was approved last April and, as the deadline for the Francos to appeal has expired, it has been firm for a few days. The legal claim, however, has not yet been filed. The municipal government assures that it will file it before the end of this year and justifies the wait in the need to "reinforce" it with the declaration of the mansion as a BIC.
La Casa de Cornide, located in the Old City of A Coruña.Gabriel Tizón
Now that the building has received this protection, the Franco family is required by law to open Casa Cornide to the public four days a month. Their lawyer, Luis Felipe Utrera-Molina, son of a former minister of the dictatorship, has not answered questions from this newspaper about when they will comply with this legal requirement. When the Pazo de Meirás was declared a BIC in 2008 by a Xunta led by the PSOE and the BNG, it took almost three years for the dictator's heirs to allow visits. After ousting the left in 2009, the government of the current leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, agreed to negotiate with the then owners of Meirás and went so far as to finance with public funds the opening of the estate that belonged to Emilia Pardo Bazán. In 2017, the Galician Administration had to file a case against the family for hindering the right of citizens to tour the pazo. The current regional executive reports that it has already communicated to the Francos that they must allow visits to their mansion in A Coruña, but does not clarify how much time it will give them to comply with this requirement taking into account the background and that the regulation does not set any deadline.
The obstacles to the Casa Cornide becoming the property of all the people of A Coruña have provoked several protests in recent years. The next one will be held this Saturday. It is convened by fifty entities, including historical memory associations, trade unions, neighbourhood groups, all political parties except PSOE and PP (it is supported by the Socialist Youth Party) and cultural organisations. The march will leave from the Plaza de María Pita at 12 noon and, as on other occasions, will feature two exceptional guests: Francisco Franco and Carmen Polo, revived by the actors Fernando Morán and Isabel Risco. The promoters of the mobilization are calling on the Xunta to force the heirs of the dictator to open the Casa Cornide to visitors before the end of this year and on the City Council to file the lawsuit this November and to withdraw all distinctions from the three Coruña residents who were accomplices in the operation.
The implications of the matter in A Coruña go beyond the recovery of the building. There are three men of the dictatorship who collaborated with the Francos in what the City Council considers a "plot" for the "fraudulent acquisition" of the Casa Cornide and who still retain all the honors that were given to them then, from streets to municipal titles: the businessman Pedro Barrié de la Maza, who was also fundamental in the usurpation of the Pazo de Meirás, and Francoist mayors Alfonso Molina and Sergio Peñamaría de Llano. All this despite the provisions of the law of historical memory and in a city that has been governed by left-wing parties in 38 of the 44 years of democratic corporations (32 of them with the consistory chaired by the PSOE). A report commissioned by the current socialist government endorses the withdrawal of distinctions from these three personalities on historical grounds since 2020, but it has never been applied. The local government has avoided explaining why.
Manuel Monge, president of the association Defensa do Común (Common Defense), which is leading the mobilization, believes that citizen pressure is essential for the administrations to squeeze the dictator's heirs. "The Francos always delay everything because they have a great team of lawyers and a lot of money," warns this activist of historical memory, who has catalogued in A Coruña 216 elements of Francoist symbols that survive the current legislation, "a real record and a shame". He believes that the socialist local government has not yet filed the lawsuit because of its "collateral effects": "They assume that withdrawing the honors from Barrié, Molina and Peñamaría de Llano is going to have a very large political cost because it is going to be used by the PP.
Since 2020, the City Council has had a legal report, prepared by the Chair of Historical Memory of the University of A Coruña, which points out several legal holes in the operation that handed over the Casa Cornide to the Franco family. The study considers the auction null and void due to various defects in its administrative processing and also the purchase and sale between the consistory and Barrié first, and between the businessman and Carmen Polo later, due to "absolute simulation". The dictator's family put the mansion up for sale on a real estate portal in the summer of 2020 and it's still there. The promoters of this Saturday's demonstration denounced shortly afterwards that they were taking belongings from inside. "Maybe when we get it back, there will be four chairs left there," Monge warns.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Read more
I'm already a subscriber
_