The Government will appeal to various European and international institutions the regional initiatives on Memory, promoted by the PP and Vox coalition governments in Aragon, Castilla y León and the Valencian Community; considering that they are contrary to the values included in the Democratic Memory Law approved last legislature by the PSOE and Unidas Podemos coalition Executive.
Specifically, the Government of Pedro Sánchez will raise this issue – “due to its seriousness” – before the Special Rapporteur on Truth, Justice and Reparation and the Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions of the United Nations, before the European Parliament and also before the Council of Europe, according to sources from Moncloa.
The President of the Executive, Pedro Sánchez, visited the Cuelgamuros forensic laboratory this Thursday – former Valley of the Fallen before the entry into force of the Democratic Memory Law – to learn first-hand about the work of the forensic team that works in the exhumation of 160 victims.
Sánchez came by surprise, since this visit was not on the official agenda, together with the Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres. After touring the central nave of the basilica with the minister and the Secretary of State for Democratic Memory, Fernando Martínez, Sánchez has accessed the forensic laboratory and, later, the crypts or columbariums where the remains are located. A technical team made up of six forensic doctors and more than 20 researchers specializing in history, archeology and genetics participates in the location and identification work.
“The law is going to be fulfilled and we must settle our outstanding debt with those who gave their lives fighting for freedom and democracy in Spain,” Sánchez said this Thursday, days after also announcing that he will appeal the right-wing crusade against memory before the Constitutional Court. The idea is to bring to this court the communities that repeal the laws already approved, as Aragón has done and the Comunitat Valenciana and Castilla y León intend to do.
What will your resources consist of?
As explained, at the United Nations, the Government will turn to both rapporteurs to evaluate the conformity of these measures “with the best international practices and the international commitments acquired by Spain in matters of Human Rights”, according to the aforementioned sources. In the European Parliament, they will promote initiatives to be included in the agenda of the plenary session of Parliament for debate and voting by the Group of Socialists and Democrats.
Likewise, in the Council of Europe, they will invoke “the possible violation of several provisions of the Human Rights Convention” and will also promote an urgent debate in the Parliamentary Assembly of this body “to analyze the repeal of the democratic memory laws approved by the communities autonomous regions governed by PP and Vox.”
The Government will also inform the General Secretariat of the Council of Europe and the Commissioner for Human Rights “to inform them of the seriousness of the situation.” Finally, it will ask for the preparation of a report on the situation of democratic memory in Spain in light of the approval of “repeal laws” by the autonomous governments of PP and Vox.
The setback in terms of historical memory was reflected in the pacts signed between the PP and Vox to govern in different autonomies, a demand that the extreme right has taken to its ultimate consequences but that the popular ones have also raised historically. Mariano Rajoy de facto repealed the first Historical Memory Law, approved by the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in 2007, by allocating zero euros in the budgets during his seven years in La Moncloa.
Source: www.eldiario.es
