Commitment to memory policies on the Day of Remembrance and tribute to all the victims of the military coup, the Civil War and the Dictatorship

30/10/2023

The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has stressed, when it is one year since the approval of the Democratic Memory Law, his "absolute commitment" to the politics of memory "so that never again this fight will be drowned in a sea of interested oblivion" and "also with the exhumations that allow to restore the dignity of those who were deprived of it in the hardest trance".

National Auditorium, Madrid

The celebration of the Day of Remembrance and Tribute to all the victims of the military coup, the Civil War and the Dictatorship in the National Music Auditorium, has been, once again, an act of recognition with the victims. During the ceremony, Declarations of Reparation and Personal Recognition were given to Manuel and Miguel Deza, María Teresa León, Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz, Conchita Grangé, Pedro Rico, Manuela Saborido "Manolita Chen", José Luis López Aranguren, Victoria Pujolar, José Ignacio Domínguez, José Luis Demaría, Francisco Rocafull, Jesús Requejo, Gabriel Aresti, Alfonso Rodríguez, Salvador Espriú, Almeida Women's Commissions, The Great Women's Logia.

The head of the Executive has pointed out that the spirit in which the law of Democratic Memory was born is that all these women and men "receive the recognition of Spanish democracy and stop inhabiting hidden corners of our history". "Democratic memory," he added, "is a matter of State that does not concern a particular ideology" and "therefore, it is incomprehensible that, even today, some do not feel as their own a duty normally assumed in any democracy." In his view, "it is utterly ignorant to say that the Law of Memory is sectarian or revanchist. It is not in any country in the world and it is not in Spain either."

The President of the Government recalled that the people honored in this act join the 242 victims who have already been nominally honored by the State in the last year. "They are a small sample of so many anonymous lives, condemned by an unjust account in a present also clandestine and raised on the memory and the stone of oblivion."

During his speech, Sánchez highlighted the "impulse" given by the government in recent years to policies of memory, with the exhumation of bodies in more than 500 actions, and many works that are still ongoing.

The head of the Executive has committed to "continue to address the withdrawal of symbols contrary to democratic memory"; to "continue working for the resignificance of places of memory, such as Cuelgamuros or as the urban center of Gernika-Lumo, and to withdraw more distinctions, decorations and honors granted, which are incompatible with democratic values, as has already been done with the titles of nobility granted between 1948 and 1978 and of the Imperial Order of the Yoke and the Arrows".

The Minister of the Presidency, Relations with the Courts and Democratic Memory in office, Félix Bolaños, also took the floor. Addressing the families of the victims, he reaffirmed his "firm and inalienable commitment" to "do everything in our power so that you never feel alone again. So that you may think that your lives - and those of your relatives - continue to inspire us."

The interpretation of the theme "For freedom" by Joan Manuel Serrat and Rozalén closed a deeply emotional act and committed to the principles of truth, justice, reparation and duty of memory as a guarantee of non-repetition.