The Grateful Dead

Were you aware that in the grounds of the aerodrome and military base in Puerto Pollensa there is a stone plinth that lists, in tribute, the names of members of the Condor Legion who died during the Civil War? The Condor Legion, lest it has been forgotten, consisted of German Luftwaffe pilots and personnel who came to the aid of Franco's Nationalists: Guernica was razed thanks to the bombs of the Condor.

Does it matter that this plaque is still in the military base? Pollensa's mayor Cerdà thinks so and took the opportunity of the arrival of military personnel for their annual vacations at the holiday camp that is the military base to reiterate a demand for its removal. Damn right he should. It contravenves, allegedly, the law on historic memory that is designed to rid Spain of symbols of the Franco era. The "monolith" carries the legend "they fell for the liberty of Spain in the battle against the Bolsheviks" (reporting from "The Diario"). It does more than that; it contravenes all sense of morality.

The law on historic memory, applied in its strictest way, might be considered to be excessive, if only for practical reasons, such as the re-naming of streets with Francoist connotations. But in the case of the military base roll of honour, its observance should apply; the monolith should go. There might be a sense of unease were the monolith to be destroyed; unease in respect of the sensitivities of the families of those pilots who died. But the Condor dead go beyond a mere Spanish issue. It was the bombing of Guernica that finally alerted the Allies to what would lie in wait if Nazi Germany went to war - and did lie in wait. The Condor was the export of Nazi militaristic ideology, and the Puerto Pollensa monolith has as much a European dimension as it does a Spanish.

Germany has not sought to erase all memory of Nazism. Anyone who has been to Dachau can testify to that. Preserving the obscenities of the Nazis remains a way of educating and countering a re-emergence ("never again"). The Condor memorial is on a totally different scale, of course, and it is of a different type, but it is still stone engraved from the same wretched quarry of inhumanity. (It should be noted that it is now more than ten years since the Germans legislated to remove the names of members of the Condor from military bases.) Moreover, it is a reminder as to how close Europe might have got to following a different course of history. Franco may have been grateful for German assistance in his fight against the Republicans, but his personal dislike and mistrust of Hitler (and the feeling was mutual) was a strong factor in Spain staying out of the Second World War.

The continuing presence of such a memorial in what is essentially a non-military military base, one frequented by personnel from Spain and other countries and used as a holiday camp, is anachronistic and offensive. For the plinth to still exist within the grounds of a base for holidaying militaries that serve current-day democracies is frankly a disgrace. There may be a vague moral issue attached to its removal, that relating to the families of the dead, but the greater morality lies in the wider context of what that memorial represents. They should get rid of it.


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