MADRID, 23 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The new Law of Democratic Memory, which entered into force last Friday, will not only serve to recognize important places in the development of the Civil War or where episodes of repression occurred during the Franco regime, but also to declare ‘places of democratic memory’ enclaves of the history of national liberalism such as the Cortes de Cádiz or the monument to Mariana Pineda de Granada.
Specifically, the new norm establishes that these places will have a “commemorative and didactic function” and that an inventory will have to be created with all of them to make them known.
According to article 49 of the law, spaces, buildings, places or intangible or intangible cultural heritages in which “events of singular relevance due to their historical, symbolic significance or their impact on collective memory, linked to democratic memory” and “the struggle of Spanish citizens for their rights and freedoms”.
The public administrations that own these goods “will be obliged to guarantee their durability, identification, explanation and adequate signage”.
In this context, the Secretary of State for Democratic Memory, Fernando Martínez López, underlines that Spain’s democratic memory does not begin with the Second Republic, but more than a century before, with the Cortes of Cádiz that gave birth to ‘la Pepa’ in 1812.
“We have to commemorate the different aspects, the different episodes, the different stages that obviously represented an advance in the entire future process that would be the liberal democratic life of this country,” he defended this week during his appearance in Congress to explain the relative items to historical memory of the Budgets for 2023.
The senior official attached to the Ministry of the Presidency stressed that Spain is “practically orphaned of liberal places of memory” and announced that it is contemplating declaring the Cortes of Cádiz as such, which had several venues between 1810 and 1814 when Fernando VII came to the throne.
The Secretary of State for Democratic Memory also mentioned the monument to Mariana Pineda de Granada. It is a statue inaugurated in 1873 in honor of the Granada heroine who was executed in 1831. “Posterity will admire her virtues. Victim of Liberty. With the secret she immortalized her name”, reads the legend inscribed on the monolith that supports her effigy.
Another of the monuments that could be declared a ‘place of memory’ is the one that honors General José María Torrijos, in Málaga, on whose beach this liberal military man was shot along with his companions in 1831.
And also the column in memory of the ‘Martyrs of Liberty’, from Almería, known as the monument to the ‘Coloraos’ because of the red suit of the British Navy worn by exiled liberal fighters in Gibraltar, from where they attempted a pronouncement in 1824 .
In addition, and as official sources confirmed to Euopa Press, next year an exhibition dedicated to the Liberal Triennium (1820-1823) will be organized, to which an international congress has already been dedicated. And another one related to the First Republic will also be celebrated when 150 of its proclamation will be fulfilled, in 1873.
