The government delegate in Galicia, Pedro Blanco, called today to “excavate in memory” to pay tribute to the people “who sacrificed everything, even life, to achieve the freedoms we enjoy today in our country”. He did so in the presentation of the first of the Dialogues with which the Government Delegation joins the commemoration “Spain in Freedom. 50 years”, and inaugurated by the archaeologist Alfredo González-Ruibal.
Pedro Blanco highlighted the work carried out by González-Ruibal on the archaeology of the Civil War to claim the need to remember and pay tribute to groups and people who defended the restoration of rights and freedoms during the dictatorship and suffered Franco’s repression for doing so.
He recalled that, in commemorating the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Transition to Democracy, the Government is promoting this tribute through intense and extensive programming with the aim of “reclaiming the great transformation achieved over the last 50 years and paying tribute to who made it possible.” And he said that “there is no better way than this to protect the freedoms of our democracy.”
Alfredo González-Ruibal
After the presentation of the delegate, the archaeologist Alfredo González-Ruibal took the floor to detail his research on the archaeology of conflict and contemporary archaeology, in which Spanish Civil War plays a special role. González-Ruibal is a research scientist at the CSIC and is assigned to the Institute of Heritage Sciences (INCIPIT), located in Santiago de Compostela.
In the year 2024 he won the National Essay Award for his work Tierra arrasada (Scorched Earth). A journey through the violence of the Paleolithic to the 21st century, in which he makes a journey through human violence throughout the history of humanity. He is the author of numerous studies and conducted research campaigns in Spain and other countries in Europe and Africa.
In recent years he was responsible for the investigation campaigns of the homes razed at the beginning of the Civil War in the Madrid neighborhood of Entreveías, in an attack that was immortalized by the photoxornalist Robert Capa. This project was funded by the State Secretariat for Democratic Memory of the Government.
Memorial program
The Government agreed to promote this year 2025 the commemoration of the “50 years of Spain in Freedom” to mark the 50th anniversary of the death of the dictator Francisco Franco and the beginning of the democratic transition process.
For this celebration, a Government Commissioner was created for this celebration (dependent on the Ministry of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory) and the historian Carmina Gustrán was appointed as head of this organization. In the case of Galicia, the program includes events around the declaration of the Island of San Simón and the Pazo de Mearas as Places of Democratic Memory, and a colloquium on heritage and memory of Franco at the University of Santiago.
It is an open program to which new activities are being incorporated to transfer society to the relevance of this commemoration. These activities are part of the cycle of Dialogues that was inaugurated today in the Government Delegation.
For the organization of these activities, the Delegation is advised by a working group composed of representatives of groups of historical memory in the Community.