The mayor of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, José Manuel Bermúdez, of the Canarian Coalition, stated this Tuesday that the regional government was trying to “stigmatize” the city by publishing a catalog of Francoist vestiges that focused solely on all those that exist in the capital of Tenerife. . The truth is that this catalog will be part of a larger regional one, that is, of the entire archipelago, but the nationalist president announced that he would file an appeal against the report for “pointing out” the city.
The Canarian Government accelerates the removal of the monument to Franco and Santa Cruz de Tenerife ignites the controversy
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This Wednesday. The Deputy Minister of Culture of the Government of the Canary Islands, Juan Márquez (Podemos), has replied to the mayor of Santa Cruz that what stigmatizes a city is to have a statue to Franco in its streetsnot that the authorities publish a catalog of the vestiges of the regime that must be removed.
This Tuesday morning, Bermúdez said that if the catalog included it, it would be withdrawn, and hours later, he used the argument of the regional sphere to announce the appeal. “Obviously, we will scrupulously comply with the withdrawal of the Francoist vestiges that are indicated in the catalog, but we will not act until it complies with the precepts of territoriality required” by law, said the alderman.
The Deputy Minister of Culture, responsible for the department that is compiling this catalog of elements that praise the dictatorship on the islands, has responded to the mayor via Twitter.
“I say this from the highest institutional respect. In the field of Historical Memory, what stigmatizes a city is not a catalog, it is having a statue of Franco in its streets,” he pointed out.
One of the items in the catalog is the Monument to the Victory of Juan de Ávalos that is located at the beginning of the Rambla de Santa Cruz, popularly known as the “monument to Franco”, because that is how this sculptural complex was presented during the dictatorship itself.
I say this from the highest institutional respect. In the field of historical memory, what stigmatizes a city is not a catalog, it is having a statue of Franco in its streets.
— Juan Marquez (@JMarquezFand) February 8, 2022
