Far-right law ‘whitewashes’ Spain’s past by not calling Franco a dictator

A new Spanish law has been called an attempt to “whitewash” history because it refuses to describe the country’s former fascist leader General Franco as a dictator.

The legislation was passed last week by the regional Castilla y León government coalition, which includes Vox, the first far-right party to be elected since Franco died in 1975 and the conservative People’s Party (PP).

The Concord Law makes no mention of the 1936 military coup that triggered the deadly three-year Spanish Civil War and does not include the word dictatorship, stating in its preamble that “there has never been a consensus on... the civil war and Francoism”.

It also seeks to shroud ongoing investigations into Franco regime murders in more secrecy, by using data privacy requirements to prevent the identity of exhumed victims’ bodies, or that of their killers, from being made public.

Emilio Silva, whose grandfather, also called Emilio, was murdered in the province of León by fascist Falangist forces in 1936 because of his leftist affiliations, said the draft law was “an insult to families like mine”.

Mr Silva recovered his grandfather’s body from a mass grave in 2000, the first such exhumation in two decades.

This sparked the creation of Spain’s Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory and led to national and regional legislation to help other people who want a dignified burial for their murdered relatives.

“Someone decided my grandfather shouldn’t exist; he had to be disappeared, and my grandmother lived for 40 years under the assassins’ rule and they took everything she had,” he said.

“It is incomprehensible that this history should be whitewashed by a parliament.”

Formed in 2022, the coalition between PP and Vox was a watershed moment for Spanish politics. The two parties now rule together in four other regions, where they are pushing for similar moves to replace existing historical memory laws.

Luis Tudanca, leader of Castilla y León’s Socialist Party opposition, claimed the proposal “resuscitates Francoism”.

He said: “It is like making a defence for Nazism and the Holocaust in today’s Germany, or like defending Mussolini and fascism in Italy.”

A spokesperson for Spain’s Socialist government told The Telegraph that it would study whether the changes contravened the national Democratic Memory Law. The new law still needs to be passed by the regional parliament, but this is highly likely to happen.

The aim of the law appears to be to shift the focus from Franco’s atrocities to those committed by left-wing factions, to serve Vox’s hard-right agenda.

Carlos Menéndez, the party’s Castilla y León spokesman, said the legislation “is free of ideology, does not divide and respects all victims”.

He added: “We are ending a biased and sectarian view of history, unbecoming of a democracy and more befitting of a totalitarian regime.”

There were a little under 2,000 people killed by the left-wing “red peril” during the war and its aftermath in Castilla y León, according to research by British historian Paul Preston.

Most of their bodies were recovered during Franco’s 40-year dictatorship.

In contrast, more than 17,000 people in the region were killed in summary executions carried out by fascist death squads or ordered by Franco’s military courts, according to Mr Preston.

Thousands of their bodies remain in more than 300 mass graves across Castilla y León that have yet to be opened.

The strict data privacy requirements in the new law would effectively mean “we won’t be able to reveal the identity of people involved in assassinations; we can’t talk about murderers or their

victims”, said Mr Silva.