The PSOE proposes that Tenerife withdraw the honors and distinctions from Franco. The socialist group presents a motion in the plenary session of the Council in the morning so that the general loses his title as Adoptive Son of the Island. The proposal seeks to comply with the Historical Memory Law that forces to eliminate any type of exaltation of the dictatorship.
Javier Rodríguez Medina, socialist councilor in charge of the defense of the motion that is presented jointly with the group Sí Podemos Canarias, assures that “the Cabildo de Tenerife must adopt the appropriate agreements to comply with the Law of Historical Memory as well as with the manifested by the Constitutional Commission of the Congress of Deputies ”. For this reason, explains Rodríguez Medina, it is proposed to the plenary session “to adopt as the only agreement to withdraw the honors and distinctions granted to General Francisco Franco Bahamonde on August 20, 1936, by which he is named adoptive son of the Island of Tenerife”.
In this sense, Rodríguez Medina recalls that the regulation establishes that «no one can feel legitimized, as happened in the past, to use violence in order to impose their political convictions and establish totalitarian regimes contrary to freedom and dignity, which deserves the condemnation and rejection of our democratic society.
This proposal is sustained, continues the socialist counselor, in that the regulations establish that “public administrations, in the exercise of their powers, must take the appropriate and necessary measures to remove shields, badges, plaques and other objects or commemorative mentions of exaltation, personal or collective, of the military uprising, of the Civil War and of the repression of the dictatorship ”.
Law 52/2007, of December 26, recognizes and expands rights in addition to establishing measures in favor of those who suffered persecution or violence during the Civil war and the dictatorship. It is known as the Historical Memory Law and was approved by the PSOE Government, which intends to comply with the guideline at the island level.
