Demolishing The Past: Sa Feixina's monument

Sa Feixina. It is the park in Palma as you turn off the Paseo Marítimo onto the Avenida Argentina and then go right for the Paseo de Mallorca. The origin of its name is uncertain. The Catalan-Valencian-Balearic Dictionary offers various alternatives. The favoured one is to describe a ramp embankment with beams ("feix" is a beam) made from branches and sand bags for the protection of soldiers on the outside of a fort. The land, which has belonged to the town hall since the seventeenth century, was modelled as a park in 1935, and a school was built. During the Civil War the school became a barracks. It wasn't to officially be returned to the town hall until the 1960s, a decade during which the park was used to house a fair dedicated to tourism and artisan crafts. In 1991 the park was given a makeover and so now consists of terraces with gardens, trees and various sculptures, one of which is by Aligi Sassu, he of horse-sculpting fame.

In 1928 construction began on a warship at the El Ferrol naval shipyard in Galicia. It was a giant of a ship, almost 200 metres in length. For various reasons it wasn't to be fully commissioned until 1936 and its first true voyage was in December of that year. Two years later the ship was sunk. At the battle of Cabo de Palos the "Baleares" was torpedoed. Eight hundred crew lost their lives. The "Baleares" had become one of the flagships of Franco's Nationalist navy. The torpedoes were those of the Republican navy.

Some years later, in 1945, a monument was built. Perhaps the apparently militaristic origins of the park's name was the reason for the choice of location or perhaps there was no militaristic connotation. Nevertheless, the monument was in memory of the "Baleares". Among the gardens and sculptures of Sa Feixina, the monument stands tall to this day. But for how much longer?

When José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was prime minister, his PSOE administration introduced the law of historic memory. Under this law symbols of Francoism could be removed. It was not a mandatory law in that decisions were left to local authorities to apply the law as they saw fit. It was also not a law that necessarily required the dismantling of physical manifestations of Francoism. The main principle of the law was that symbols which exalted Franco and the regime should go. 

In 2010 the administration in Palma, then led by PSOE's Aina Calvo, applied the law to the monument. A local decree was issued. This established that a shield and words exalting Franco's regime would be removed. The monument would otherwise stay, and there would be a new plaque. It was to read: "This monument was erected in 1945 in memory of the victims of the sinking of the battleship "Baleares" during the Civil War (1936-1939). Today it is a symbol for the city of the democratic will to never forget the errors of wars and dictatorships".

The text had in fact been agreed some years before the law had been brought in. It, and consideration of the monument under the provisions of the law, were studied by two law professors at the university. With their guidance the town hall adopted the decree, Calvo pointing out that the law did not require the monument's withdrawal and also noting that the law recognised the memory of all victims of the war. The monument was thus officially reinterpreted, and this interpretation was made when one of Calvo's deputy mayors was José Hila, now himself mayor of Palma.

The current administration under Hila, which comprises PSOE, Més and the Palma branch of Podemos, is seemingly going to go ahead in approving the demolition of the monument, which doesn't have any protected status insofar as it is not "catalogued" by the municipality, something that would afford it heritage preservation. As has been pointed out, however, in a new era of consultation and dialogue, there hasn't been any, including requests for reports from the likes of ARCA, the association for the preservation of old centres. It concedes that the monument doesn't necessarily have great artistic merit but it does have historical value, and it - as are others - is reminding the administration of the compromise that Calvo arrived at: one with which Hila was in agreement.

The arguments that are now raging are predictable ones. They include accusations that the leftist administration is representative of a tendency which wishes to continue to fight battles of almost eighty years ago but which should let things be. The reinterpretation of the monument was made, and it was done so to the satisfaction of a majority, but the counter-arguments have it that it remains a symbol of the horrors of Francoism and one, moreover, that took the name of the islands.