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.

Treating The Amnesty On Spain's Amnesia

On 20 November in two years time there will be a fortieth anniversary. Forty years are not normally marked out for particular commemoration, but for some Spaniards 20 November 2015 will be worthy of commemoration. For others it will be worthy of condemnation. For others still it will be worthy of being ignored. Spaniards divide between those who revere the memory of Franco, and so therefore the anniversary of his death, those who most certainly do not and those who would rather forget about him.

Forty years do not represent a long time. They are half a lifetime. A similar length of time to which Franco ruled. Forty years also don't represent a long time in the past. It is why so many Spaniards remember but also why so many would prefer to forget, but they can't forget because the spectre of Franco hangs over Spain. His memory cannot be shaken off. If at times it has seemed as though it might be, it comes back again. But even shaking the memory off requires an awful lot of memory and an awful lot of argument, emotion and raking over the past.

Where does Franco exist in current-day Spain? He is there, though he is not wanted, in Catalonia and so, by association, in Mallorca too. He is there in the Catholic Church. He is there in education, with the national government wanting to give equal weight to religious studies at high-school level. He is there in Opus Dei. He is there at the bullfight. He might even be said to be there at Real Madrid. He is there in a part, a very small part, of the Iberian Peninsula, and a part which isn't Spain. He is there in Gibraltar.

Franco is also there in "in Franco's day", the one that carries the caveat which goes something like "I know he was a dictator, but". Franco is also there in the law. There is one which is devoted to him, the law on historic memory. Franco is also there in the courts and in jealousies among judges. Baltasar Garzón can tell you all about these.

The law on historic memory, introduced by Zapatero's socialist government, is still on the statute book, but it is neglected. The Partido Popular government does not fund it, citing financial reasons. Whether it was a good law is perhaps debatable. Those many Spaniards who would rather forget would not have been happy to have a legislative instrument devised in order to make them remember and examine their own historic memories. They might have preferred that there were no arguments over the names of streets that echoed with the barbarity of an otherwise obscure military figure.

It was a law that did, nevertheless, attempt to make Spaniards face up to the past. The national amnesia that was the product of the amnesty law after Franco's death had to be treated. Collective and wilful forgetfulness does not serve a democratic society or one which protests that it is. Democratic society has to confront its history, both good and bad, to learn from it, to not repeat the same mistakes, to not have citizen fight citizen.

The amnesty law, though it may have been passed with the best of intentions, brushed too much under the nation's carpet. There was no truth and no reconciliation. Zapatero's historic memory law did not address the amnesty law. It was one aimed at symbols of Francoism rather than justice or truth. Nevertheless, because Baltasar Garzón, a PSOE sympathiser, was riding high during the Zapatero period, he would have felt emboldened in challenging the amnesty law, in ordering exhumations, in seeking truths about the disappeared from the Civil War and its aftermath. He was wrong. Not because Zapatero abandoned him but because his rivals and elements within the Partido Popular went gunning for him, citing the amnesty law and so eventually having him disqualified.

Now, the United Nations in the form of its Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances have brought Franco back into the frame. This group has contacted the Spanish Government and told it that it must revoke the amnesty law and set in motion a plan to look into what happened to all those Spaniards who disappeared. It has told the government that it has international obligations to meet and that far too little is being done to investigate incidents which could and perhaps should be tried in court.

Will the government take these demands seriously? What do you think? Catalonia, Catholic Church, religious studies, Garzón, "I know he was a dictator, but".