Tortosa: Franco Monument to stay
Courtesy of Foro-Ciudad.com
A vote held on November 8th rejected an local initiative to remove a monument inaugurated by Franco in 1966, in honor of those who died in the Ebro Battle, fighting on the Nationalist side. The motion was proposed by residents of Tortosa and other towns near the Ebro River in Tarragona, in accordance with the Historical Memory Law of 2007 which provides for the removal of Francoist symbols from public spaces.
According to the EFE news agency, the vote on Tuesday, the 8th was the second time elected officials of Tortosa debated the removal of this controversial monument in the current mandate. This time, the center and right-wing parties, CiU (Convergència i Unió) and PP (Popular Party) were decisive in defeating this initiative.
The popular initiative organized by the Comisión para la Retirada de los Símbolos Franquistas (Committee to Remove Francoist Symbols) claimed that the monument under debate was not:
A monument to the Ebro Battle, but rather a monument to Franco’s dictatorship and that maintaining it intact means continuing to pay tribute to a general responsable for a coup.
The motion also called for renaming a square and high school in Tortosa, currently named for Joaquín Bau, a politician from Tortosa who held several government positions during the dictatorship, as well as renaming a group of private houses known as the “January 13th” houses. This commemorates the date that Franco’s troops crossed the Ebro and occupied the entire city of Tortosa.
Tortosa’s mayor, Ferran Bel (CiU), agreed that the name “January 13th” be changed since he recognized that almost 30 years ago it was voted at a similar City Council meeting to be changed to “Grupo del Templo” (Temple Group) but hadn’t been put into practice yet.
Representatives of the dominant CiU party argued that they rejected this motion because they didn’t consider taking down the monument to be an urgent priority for the city. They added that they considered it to be an electioneering strategy, since it was presented just a few weeks before the upcoming Parliamentary elections in Catalunya (Nov. 28th). When the motion was turned down members of the committee that had presented it turned on an audio recording of the news story (NODO) broadcast in 1966 on the inauguration of the monument
The Committee to Remove Francoist Symbols has announced it will start gathering more signatures right away to continue their campaign til they remove Franco’s victory monument.
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