Headquarters of the Government of the Canary Islands/Teatro Guiniguada, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
The meeting was attended by the Delegate of the Government in the Canary Islands, Anselmo Pestana, and the Deputy Minister of Justice, Carla Vallejo; in addition to the president of the Association of Historical Memory of Arucas, Pino Sosa; and the coordinator of the Association of Historical Memory of Arucas; Gregorio Arencibia; as well as the director of the Cabinet of the Secretary of State for Democratic Memory, Alfonso Berlanga.
At this meeting, the Secretary of State explained the content of the Preliminary Draft Law on Democratic Memory, approved by the Government last September. The meeting also brought to the table the collaboration between the two administrations in the development of the Four-Year Exhumation Plan, foreseen in the Preliminary Bill, and which will encourage the public administrations to take charge of the entire process of exhumation of people who are still buried in mass graves. Both administrations will also strengthen collaboration on aspects related to the creation of a DNA bank or a census of missing persons in the islands.
Galdadian days
After the meeting, the Secretary of State participated in the presentation of the Galdosiana Days in an event that took place in the Guiniguada theater of Las Palmas de Gran Fernando Martínez intervenes in the presentation of the Days Galdosianas.Canaria. In this presentation he was accompanied by Juan Márquez, Deputy Minister of Culture and Cultural Heritage of the Government of the Canary Islands, and José Andrés Torres Mora, Executive President of Acción Cultural Española.
Fernando Martínez stressed that "if there is a writer in the history of Spanish literature comparable with the Cervantes novelist or with the prolific Lope de Vega, he is undoubtedly Benito Pérez Galdós" and stressed that "he reflected Spanish life, customs, events, politics and thought like nobody else". The Secretary of State stressed that not only was tribute paid to the writer and politician, but especially "to the writer who represented and defended in his works the profile of a modern, secular civil society. An image rejected by traditionalists."
The Secretary of State has linked the tribute to the Canarian writer with the efforts made by the Government for the recovery of democratic memory in Spain and has stressed that "for those of us who are promoting the Democratic Memory Law, the tribute to Galdós is fully inscribed in the individual and collective processes of struggles of the Spanish people for the freedoms, rights and values of democracy that we want to publicize and disseminate".
The Galician Days are held as part of the commemoration of the centenary of the death of Benito Pérez Galdós. These days will take place between October 26 and November 11 in three cities that marked the life of the best Spanish novelist of the 20th century: Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Santander and Madrid. Under the title Historiar el futuro, they have a multidisciplinary program that will include round tables, conferences and an exhibition at the Cervantes Institute related to the author, and will have as a culmination a gala at the Teatro Real in Madrid.