Remembering the II Republic

All parties except the Partido Popular (PP) approve a bill to declare 2006 the Year of Historical Memory
The bill, now made law, proposes that the Second Republic (1931-1936) be recognized as the antecedent of democracy in Spain.

ELPAIS.es - España - 27-04-2006

All parlimentary groups of Congress, except the PP, approved a bill today that declares 2006 as Year of Historical Memory, and will require the Government to present, within a month, a report on the situation of the victims of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and from the dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939-1975). All of the parties explained to Congress that the new law does not intend to "reopen wounds," with the exception of the Partido Popular, which sustains that the initiative pretends to "use the past as a political weapon."

The proposal earned 172 votes in favor, 131 against -all delegates from the PP- and four abstentions from the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), which considered the initiative insufficient. The bill proposes that the II Republic be recognized as the antecedent of the current democratic state and requires the Zapatero's government to foment a homage to the victims of the Spanish Civil War and of Francoism within the year.

This recognition will be accompanied by the circulation of government issued stamps and coins in honor of those who defended "the constitutional order established in the II Republic" and who suffered from Francoist repression. The Partido Popular presented an ammendment for 2006 to be declared "Year of Consentment," a proposal which was rejected by all other parliamentary groups.

Inheritors of the Republic
In his speech before Congress, the spokesperson for the PP, Manuel Atencia, announced that his group would vote against all initiatives on Historical Memory, since "they are contrary to the constitutional pact (of 1978), intend to impose an oficial truth, attempt to revise the democratic transition, divide Spaniards and reopen old wounds."

According to Atencia, "the II Republic is history and should be treated as such." Also, he reminded Congress that the constitutional monarchy born in 1978 brought with it the "overcoming of old conflicts." After lamenting that President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero "declares himself inheritor of the II Republic, rather than inheritor of (his own party, the Partido Socialista Obrero Español, PSOE, and its politicians from the democratic transition in the 1980s,) Felipe González or Alfonso Guerra," then Atencia assured that the PP does indeed feel it is the inheritor of the Unión de Centro Democrático (UCD), the party that "piloted the transition." The socialist spokesperson Ramón Jáuregui called it "lamentable" that the PP "is incapable of commemorating collectively such transcending events of our history" and retorted that "memory cannot be avoided" and that "the transition confused pardon with forgetting." During his intervention, the spokesperson for the Izquierda Unida (IU-ICV), Gaspar Llamazares, author of the initiative, assured that the PP should not feel like it is the inheritor of Francoism, but of the "best democratic transition" and insisted that a recuperation of Historical Memory does not intend to cause confrontation among Spaniards.

"Not forgetting is the best guarantee for a collective process in democratic terms," commented Carles Campuzano of the CiU, while the representative for the PNV Aitor Esteban accused the PP of situating the Republic "at the same level as the years of Francoist dictatorship." Lastly, Agustí Cerdá of the ERC asked that the opportunity to recuperate memory not be passed up, as "the people deserve it, and all of the victims."