同樣在1975年去世的軍事委員會委員長(Generalísimo)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2288956.html

2006/7/28

Civil war wounds are reopened as Franco comes under fresh attack

By Thomas Catan

The Government wants to honour the dictator’s victims but risks a backlash

THE Spanish Government is about to introduce a controversial Bill honouring the victims of General Franco, which will probably include a new drive to remove the last symbols of his dictatorship from public spaces.

But even before its announcement, expected today, the draft law has come under attack from all sides, which are engaged in a fierce battle over the violent past of the country.

The legislation was an electoral promise by the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, which swept to power days after the Madrid train bombings in March 2004. Although Señor Zapatero has moved swiftly to implement other pledges, including withdrawing Spanish troops from Iraq and legalising same-sex unions, he has repeatedly delayed the announcement of the so-called law of historical memory.

The Government appears reluctant to ignite a political firestorm with its proposals, which have infuriated conservative politicians. The opposition Popular Party says that any effort to revisit the past will merely serve to divide Spaniards and reopen wounds from the civil war. Some even assert that the Bill is an effort to paint the Opposition as Francoist and undemocratic.

Leftist parties are enraged by what they regard as back-pedalling by Señor Zapatero. Even before its announcement, the Republican Left party of Catalonia called his Bill a “betrayal of his dead, the socialist fighters who were victims of the dictatorship”. Others have criticised it as weak and cowardly, and a terrible example for future generations.

Leftist campaigners have been calling for the annulment of the summary judgments that led to tens of thousands of executions during Franco’s rule. Others have been seeking fresh compensation for those who suffered at the hands of the Franco regime. But they fear that after years of waiting they will be deeply disappointed with the Bill.

One of the more controversial issues that ministers have been wrestling with is what to do with the many symbols left over from Franco’s regime. During the 1980s the Socialist Government removed some of the most ostentatious tributes to Franco, including some street names. The present Government has continued the process, uprooting the last statue of the dictator in Madrid last year. It is expected to go further , recommending the removal of any last traces of the Generalísimo from public spaces. The process would touch the two Spanish institutions that were long considered the last bastions of Francoism: the Roman Catholic Church and the army.

Señor Zapatero is likely to order the removal of one of the few remaining statues of Franco, in the military academy in Zaragoza. Churches could be asked to remove the shrines from the Franco years listing the names of those who fought on his side as having fallen for God and country. However, the most contentious symbol remains the Valley of the Fallen, a pharaonic, Fascist-style mausoleum built by Franco as a tribute to the Nationalist dead. The sprawling complex, where Franco’s remains lie, was carved out of a mountainside by thousands of slave labourers from the Republican side which lost control of Spain during the three-year civil war.

Successive governments have tried to turn the fearsome complex into a monument to the dead on both sides of the conflict. Señor Zapatero’s Government has also considered the idea of building a museum on the site to educate visitors about the workers who perished during its construction.

As long as Franco’s tomb remains on the site it seems unlikely that it will ever be anything but a monument to his regime.

Alejandro Quiroga, a historian at the University of Newcastle, spoke recently to some of the few surviving men who laboured on the site. “They said it was impossible that such a dark place could ever become a place for reconciliation,” he said.

THE MIGHTY FALL

·  Peter the Great built his showpiece capital St Petersburg in 1703. During the First World War the name was considered too Germanic, so it was changed to Petrograd. After the Revolution Communists renamed it Leningrad. With the fall of Communism it reverted to its original name

·  Nikita Khrushchev distanced himself from Stalin’s bloody rule by changing the name of Stalingrad to Volgograd

·  For 60 years the authorities in Berlin kept secret the location of Hitler’s bunker. Only recently have they turned the site into a tourist attraction

·  One of the iconic images of the War in Iraq was the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in the main square of Baghdad, one of many pulled down as US troops entered the city

·  Anticipating a future Italian empire, Mussolini erected an imposing colonial office in Rome. The building now houses the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN