March 28, 1939, when Franco's troops took Madrid, an English ship, the Stanbrook, it was at sea in Alicante with 500 refugees on board. Alicante became the last bastion of Republican English Civil War. In the crowded port city residents, soldiers arrived at the front, peasants laden with suitcases, trunks and even farm implements, fugitives from Murcia and Albacete, more than 20,000 refugees were kept in place only hope to be rescued by ships sent by France or Britain.
But the boats did not arrive and those who were seen veered round to the magnitude of the humanitarian enterprise to which they had to face. Even the Mid-Atlantic, formed with money from the English Republic and based in Marseille, would not risk their ships in the event of possible avalanches. After heavy shelling, Alicante had become a ghost town.
Nobody wanted to fall into the hands of the bloody dictatorship that was coming from the hand of Francisco Franco. But the die was cast. Those not killed by bullets in the crouching shooters on the line of buildings, which did not opt \u200b\u200bfor suicide, spread like an epidemic, were captured and concentrated in the Plaza de Toros, film Ideal and the Campo de los Almendros. In the concentration camp Albatera opened on April 11, 1939, prisoners were not executed were subjected to all kinds of torture and humiliation, if not delivered directly to the Falange, who came from all over Spain, to "hunt" prisoners known to them to shoot around the field. In light of the facts, it is shameful that Francisco Franco continues to hold in the city of Alicante the distinction of favorite son since 1940, the Gold Medal in 1966 and the title of honorary mayor ever in a situation clearly illegal.
Law Historical Memory provides in Article 15.1, that public authorities "take appropriate measures for the removal of shields, badges, plaques and other commemorative objects or references exaltation, personal or collective military uprising, the War Civil and repression of the dictatorship. " However, Mayor Luis Diaz Alperi apparently does not want the full municipal enterarse.En Feb. 22, the PSPV-PSOE presented a motion that the City enforce the law and overturned the honors granted to Francisco Franco during the dictatorship. Alperi Luis Díaz, Mayor of Alicante, responded by demanding the collection of 25,000 signatures to put implement the Socialist motion. In April, the Ombudsman agreed to process the complaint of the Platform for Citizen Initiatives (PIC) in Alicante against the mayor, also sent to the Ombudsman, to make application of the law the requirement of collecting signatures is not covered therein. Luis Diaz Alperi, after four months, has relied on the Law Governing the Local System to justify, in a brief letter of seven lines, their position.
obstructionist stance Luis Diaz Alperi showing their affiliation with the Francoist past, is true to the strategy of the Popular Party government of the Generalitat Valenciana initiatives to boycott the socialist government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, backed with appropriate modifications, by the English Parliament and lack of respect for the innocent victims of the Civil War and the subsequent reign of terror imposed by the Francoist system.
While the motion of PSPV-PSOE and the denunciation of the PIC are registered in the existing legislation, and respond to the moral debt owed to women and men who maintained the democratic and republican position is anchored Alperi Diaz the wave neoconservative justifications interested in finding the Franco regime.
democratic maturity of a society depends on understanding and controlling your own mind to settle on him a decent future based on the realization of human rights, but this is only possible if a memory integrated in the principle of justice banishes the attempt to preserve the past misrepresented. A democratic society is not compatible with the maintenance of honors to one of the bloodiest dictators of the twentieth century. Making these distinctions are eliminated is an exercise of democratic integrity.
Jiménez Francisco Javier Segura is Professor of History.
Information Journal, 8/27/2008
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