The United Nations Organization (UN) criticized in a report the laws promoted by the right and the extreme right in three regions of Spain, claiming that They could hinder the right of the victims of Franco’s regime to know the truth and give rise to denialist theories..
This was expressed by three rapporteurs of the organization, in response to a complaint filed by the Government of Pedro Sanchez against the so-called “concord laws”, which were processed in the regions of Aragon, Castilla y León and the Valencian Community, governed in coalition by the conservative Popular Party (PP) and the far-right Vox. The central Executive raised the issue with the UN considering that these regulations are contrary to the values included in the Democratic Memory Law approved in 2022..
The signatories of the documents are the special rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-repetition, the Argentine Fabian Salvioli; the president of the Working Group on Forced or Involuntary Disappearances, Aua Baldé from Bissauguine; and the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, the Chilean Morris Tidball-Binz.
The report
After analyzing the projects promoted by PP and Vox in these autonomous communities, the rapporteurs indicated: “The so-called ‘concord’ laws approved or presented for parliamentary approval in the autonomous communities of Aragón, Castilla y León, and Valencia, could affect the obligation of the Spanish State, including its national or local powers and entities, in matters of Human Rights, in particular the obligation to guarantee the preservation of the historical memory of serious violations of Human Rights.”
As they explained, these laws “order the suppression of multiple entities, projects, websites and activities of historical memory and They can lead to limits on access to the truth about the fate or whereabouts of the victims of serious violations of Human Rights and can also make invisible the serious violations of Human Rights committed during the Franco dictatorial regime.or fail to name or condemn said regime.”
The rapporteurs also pointed out the importance of not discriminating between types of victims when recognizing and giving justice and reparation to them, although they pointed out that the laws of concord could lead to assimilating the violations committed during the Franco dictatorship and the war. civil “to a heterogeneous group of crimes or violations committed by different actors, state and non-state, throughout the 20th century in Spain”, thus removing the recognition of thousands of people killed in extrajudicial executions and forced disappearances committed during the regime of Francisco Franco.
For this reason, They recalled that it is the duty of all powers of the State, including the executive, legislative and judicial, as well as all government entities at the national, regional or local level, “to comply with the obligation to protect human rights, including the obligation to guarantee the historical preservation of the memory of serious human rights violations.” “We also reiterate that these measures must be aimed at preserving collective memory from oblivion and, in particular, preventing the emergence of revisionist and denialist theses. These laws (proposed or approved) would hinder the right to know the truth and the right to freedom of association,” they stressed.
The reactions in Spain
Meanwhile in Spain, the far-right Vox criticized the report. The party’s spokesman, Carlos Menéndez, doubted the partiality of the UN document with the argument that one of the three rapporteurs, the Argentine Fabian Salvioli, “is accredited and is a close personal friend of Baltasar Garzón.” However, he admitted that he did not read the text.
From the PP, the president of Aragón, Jorge Azcón, also spoke out against. “What he says is a lie, there should be more seriousness. This leaves the UN in a bad light, which did not count on Aragón to prepare this report,” said Azcón, in statements reported by the newspaper. The country. The Aragonese vice president, Mar Vaquero, added that the Spanish government “provided the UN with biased, partisan information with the sole intention of continuing to pursue trench politics.”
The Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain assured in a statement that the so-called “concord” laws are “an attempt to whitewash Francoism and glorify the dictatorship, which represents an attack on the victims.”
For its part, the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) demanded that the PP and Vox immediately withdraw these laws. According to the news agency Europa Presssocialist sources indicated that they demanded that the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, take a clear position on the United Nations document and “say whether he is with the victims or with these laws of shame.” “There is no place for those nostalgic for the dictatorship”they insisted on the PSOE.
The Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities of the Government of Spain and General Secretary of the PSPV-PSOE, Diana Morantadded in a message published on his social networks: “We are going to act to stop those who seek to whitewash Francoism. It is a confrontation against our memory that we are not going to consent to”.
