Fascist symbols in the European Parliament
Several Catalan MEPs made a formal complaint in the European Parliament about the
presence of Spanish Fascist symbols in the very corridors of the Parliament building in
Brussels last Thursday 14th January 2010.
What is on show, in a special exhibition case that hundreds of MEPs must pass before daily, is a
commemoration tome of the Spanish Constitution open at the page on which King Juan Carlos signed
the document in 1978. What is particularly offensive about this "show piece" is the presence of a large
Fascist coat of arms in which all the official symbols of the Franco dictatorship are clearly in view.
That is, the Imperial Eagle and the motives of the yolk and the arrows -that were introduced by the
Falangist party- along with the Francoist slogan "Una Grande y Libre".
One ERC MEP has called for the immediate withdrawal of the offending show piece whereas CiU and
ICV MEPs have announced
that they will demand to
know who is responsible for
this
provocation.
Meanwhile the Catalan
Socialists have taken on
the commitment to ask the
Spanish Government to
withdraw the preConstitutional symbology
and have it replaced with
a fresh copy of the
Constitution. The present
copy was placed in the EP
in 1998 by the President of
the Spanish Parlaiment at
that time, Federico Trillo of
the PP, a fact that since
then seems to have been
"overlooked".
Disbelief, indignation and
shame are some of the
reactions that the
disclosure of this affair have sparked off in Catalan society. In Spain however, predictably enough,
the news seems not to have caused any major turmoil. Why is this? one may ask. Some sources have
pointed to the nature of the political "Transition" occurring in Spain at the death of Franco to explain the
ongoing presence of Fascist symbols not only in 1978 -three years after the death of Franco- but
indeed in the very European Parliament more than thirty years later! The truth is that the Franco
regime and its representatives were never truly superceded and much less so reprimanded when democracy
finally reached Spain. Indeed many remember that King Juan Carlos himself is today king because he
was the heir designated by General Franco to reign after his death. Juan Carlos had on more than one
occasion sworn allegiance to the principles of the Fascist Falangist Movement on becoming Prince and
heir. Indeed, Juan Carlos presided over a huge rally held in Madrid in answer to Europe's protests over
the execution of five anti-Francoist militants in 1975. In public events after the death of the dictator he
is known to have paid public tribute to Franco and former dictator Primo de Rivera. Parallel to this, none
of the ministers or other officials of the regime were held responsible for any of the many crimes committed
in Franco's Spain, where 200.000 people are known to have been killed after the end of the Civil War
(1936-1939).
All this explains how, even today, the Popular Party (PP) has Manuel Fraga Iribarne as its honorary
president, the equivalent of which would be unimaginable in any other European democracy of our time.
Could a Hitler minister preside over a democratic party in today's Germany? Mr Fraga Iribarne was
minister of the Interior at a time when many State crimes were committed. To name but one, the VitoriaGasteiz slaughter of 3rd March 1976 in which five unarmed workers were gunned down when leaving a
church where a workers' assembly had been held.
Likewise, Mr Rodolfo Martin Villa, who as minister was responsible for the physical elimination of
hundreds of tons of compromising Falangist documentation, is today president of Sogecable, the
media company complex closest to the Socialist Party.
These examples are not anecdotes or exceptional contradictions but very clear indications of the fact that
in Spain the Franco dictatorship has never been properly uprooted. Its ongoing effects are still not only
visible but actually still causing harm. As an example of this we may refer to the fact that the death
penalties and other punishments applied illegally by the Franco regime have not yet been annulled, albeit
it symbolically. The reason given for this is one of the most worrying features of the whole situation.
In 2006 president Zapatero officially announced that those penalties could not be annulled "because it
would question the basis of today's Constitutional Spain". This is every bit of an admission that presentday "democratic" Spain is in fact an offshoot of Franco's Spain on which it was built without any form of
effective purge or democratic reconstitution taking place. Can anyone imagine Angela Merkel announcing
that a Hitler decree "could not be annulled" because it might affect the stability of present-day
Germany? The scandal would without doubt be worldwide.
Suffice it to say that the present Attorney General appointed by the Spanish socialists, and into whose
hands the decision to annul the penalties was put, is the grandson of one of the military judges with most
blood on his hands for anti-Republican repression conducted by the Francoists in the post-war years
(1939-1950). This and other motives are what led organisations such as Amnesty International,
Human Rights Watch and the very Human Rights Committee of the United Nations to point an
accusing finger at the current Spanish Government, which it accuses of perpetuating the impunity
of the crimes committed under Franco a fact that, in the words of one official, "places Spain in the
same division as El Salvador".
Spain still has a considerable democratic deficit today. It has not been able to put Franco into the past
and denounce the horrors
produced under his rule. School
children in Spain may learn
about the concentration camps
in Germany and the Soviet
Union but have no idea that
Franco's Spain had 180 of them.
Spanish school children are
not told that Franco tried to
annihilate the Catalan and
Basque language and culture
nor that his regime
cooperated 100% with Hitler
and Mussolini.
Yet one University teacher from Galicia was recently taken to court for investigating the involvement of
Falangists in the killing of village folk in Galicia during the Francoist uprising. Certainly, Spain has not
still come to terms with its past, by which it is still held to ransom. In the corridors of the European
Parliament we have clear proof of this worrying fact today.