The Government has opened an information file to determine whether the brotherhood of Santo Cristo de la Clemencia and Santa María Madre de la Divina Providencia has violated the Democratic Memory Law after displaying a banner with Francoist symbols during the procession it carried out last Saturday Passion during Holy Week in Malaga.
On it you could read phrases such as “Una grande libre” and “Franco 1936”, in addition to having the shield of the eagle of San Juan embroidered, as the municipal group Con Málaga has denounced, in a writing.
Its spokesperson, Toni Morillas, said on the social network
Founded in 1939 and of a military nature, this brotherhood had General José Millán-Astray as its first Big Brother.
Popularly known as El Mutilado and based in the Sagrado church, it was processed on Passion Saturday through the streets of Malaga.
Among the procession was a Nazarene who carried a banner with a silver crucified Christ without one of his legs.
Among the thread-embroidered decoration you could see the shield of the eagle of Saint John embroidered in gold thread.
Inside you could read “Franco 1ero de Julio de 1936” and above it “Una grande libre”, as published by the newspaper
Sur
the next day, a medium that stressed that the element had already been in procession in 2023 and other sources indicate that it will also be in 2022. “Processions that exalt the dictatorship,” the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory stressed on social networks.
On Monday, Toni Morillas, municipal spokesperson for Con Málaga—an electoral coalition that includes Izquierda Unida, Podemos, Más País, Verdes Equo, Alianza Verde and the Andalusian People's Initiative, with two councilors in the Málaga City Council—wrote a letter to the mayor , Francisco de la Torre.
“As a city council we have the obligation to ensure compliance with current legislation and protect democratic integrity and coexistence, even more so when it is a popular expression of the social significance of Holy Week in Malaga,” reflected the letter, which requested that what happened be brought to the attention of the subdelegation of the Government in the province of Malaga so that “the corresponding sanctioning measures” could be applied in the event of a possible violation of the Democratic Memory Law and that action be taken “to guarantee that this illegal exaltation of Francoism does not occur.” "it repeats itself again."
Later, “in the face of the dead silence” of the councilor, he addressed the Government's deputy delegate in Malaga, Javier Salas.
He has explained that, once he has received the letter, an information file has been opened to determine if the display of the banner violates the law "and to what degree."
Official sources have explained that the objective is to gather more information about the events, content that will then be submitted to the Secretariat of State for Democratic Memory - dependent on the Ministry of the Presidency - which will determine the result of the initiated process.
In 2019, the association of jurists March 17 asked the court to suspend the departure of the Virgin of the Brotherhood of Baratillo because she was wearing a Franco sash, understanding that it constituted a hate crime and against the Democratic Memory law (the current one so).
Neither the Prosecutor's Office, first, nor later the judge - who closed the case - considered that it constituted a hate crime or that it violated the law because the sashes were not within the catalog of goods contrary to democratic memory.
The virgin processed with the sash on Holy Wednesday.
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