The Councilor for Culture of Burriana, Jesús Albiol, from Vox, has removed a plaque from the Mercé convent in the Castellón municipality "in memory of women and men who suffered persecution for seeking their freedom."
This space was used as a provisional prison between 1939 and 1942, housing 3,668 inmates (271 women and 3,397 men), according to the figures indicated on the plaque, installed in 2016. The existence of “historical errors and false data” is the argument put forward by the councilor of the ultra formation.
The councilor has announced that he will locate a new one "in another place and where the real historical data, contrasted and investigated by the technician of the municipal museum about what happened there since that building exists", but without specifying what errors it is about or what information has been requested to be modified.
“There are errors, and we will say them,” the councilor has limited himself to saying, without detailing when or why not now.
From the Group for the Recovery of Historical Memory (GRMH) they assure that there is no wrong information on the plaque: “Everything is perfectly documented, it was an important post-war prison and we have testimonies from inmates and a lot of irrefutable photographic and documentary material. ”.
“That they defend the dictatorship and the ferocious post-war repression, and that they want to continue hiding it, is evident.
Also that they do not respect democracy and make decisions without procedure, arbitrarily,” they have stated in reference to Vox from the GRMH.
The removal of the plaque once again makes the cultural management of Jesús Albiol in the municipality controversial.
He was responsible for canceling, a few months after taking office, the council's subscription to five magazines in Catalan - two for children - because he considered them “promoters of separatism”, replacing them with others in non-normative Valencian.
He also ordered the removal, as Councilor for Culture, from the children's and youth section of the Burriana library of LGTBI-themed books to “protect minors from pornographic and scandalous content.”
The PP speaks of an “unfortunate” decision
The mayor of Burriana, Jorge Monferrer, of the PP - who agreed with Vox to assume the local government after the elections last May - has always opted for a fairly neutral speech in the face of the previous actions of the far-right councilor, appealing that they correspond to the area of culture that he manages.
This time, on the occasion of the removal of the plaque, he has pointed out that Albiol's is a "totally unfortunate arbitrary decision that reminds us of times already passed."
The mayor's office will commission a report next Wednesday - after the failures - to the archaeologist and the municipal technicians to "really verify whether there is erroneous data or not on the plate, and from there we will act," although without specifying how.
For its part, the PSPV has already announced that it will file a complaint with the prosecutor's office and the Secretary of State for the "unilateral" removal of the plaque, "a very serious infraction for making the vestiges erected in memory and recognition of representative events disappear." democratic memory”.
In Albiol's opinion, the plaque responded “to a political use of the victims of the civil war, pointing out the good and the bad,” emphasizing once again, without going into details, that the data “are totally false.”
The councilor of the far-right party accuses Compromís of having made, during his years of co-government, political use of history "to obtain political benefit from the victims of the Spanish civil war by distorting history."
He stressed: “I am the Councilor for Culture, it is a cultural building and what I want is for people to know what has happened in it from its construction to the current date;
"What uses has it had, without any ideology."
“The left has dedicated itself in recent years to using the victims of the civil war to confront the Spanish.
There were victims, but on both sides.
Not just one,” he pointed out.
The popular mayor of Burriana insists on the arbitrariness of a “totally unfortunate” decision and appeals that “debates like this only divide citizens in the midst of the Fallas festivals, which unite the people of Burrian regardless of their ideology.”
The PSPV-PSOE of Castelló and the socialist municipal group of Borriana will report the facts to the prosecutor's office.
The socialist spokesperson in Burriana, Maria Josep Safont, calls the decision of the Vox councilor “cowardly,” “taking advantage of the beginning of the failures to try to make it go unnoticed.”
They demand that the mayor act “once and for all” and “do something” so that his government “stops embarrassing Borriana in front of the entire country with his continuous occurrences.”
“The PP surrenders to Vox and whitewashes the Franco dictatorship,” she denounced.
For his part, the provincial general secretary of the PSPV, Samuel Falomir, has requested that the removed plaque be restored and has urged the public ministry to act “urgently” against this “attack on democracy.”
The socialist spokesperson for Democratic Memory in Les Corts, Mercedes Caballero, has announced the presentation of a non-law proposal (PNL) to demand that the Consell “stop the excesses of the extreme right” in town councils such as Burriana.
“No matter how much it defends anti-democratic postulates, the extreme right cannot contravene the law or continually attack democratic memory,” she stressed.