Tenerife was the scene of the preparations for the military uprising led by Franco since his appointment as Commander General of the Canary Islands in March 1936. The historian Ángel Viñas has already pointed out that the death of General Balmes, in Gran Canaria, was key to the start of the Spanish Civil War. The book investigations Franco’s first assassination They point out that his death was the final piece that was missing to start the uprising since he did not want to participate in this uprising. Franco traveled to this island to attend the soldier’s funeral and then leave for Tetouan from the fast dragon and start the coup. The island of Tenerife, Franco’s residence at that time, thus became “a reference in the cartography of the emblems of the Victory at the moment in which the supremacy of the rebel side advanced”. This is how it is collected in the Catalog of Francoist Vestiges of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, a work of historical documentation supported by studies, information of the time and prepared by the professor of History Maisa Navarro, together with the expert doctors Ricardo A. Guerra Palmero and Yolanda Peralta Sierra.
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The study shows that the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and, by extension, the island, has gathered “the greatest concentration of monuments in the country from the point of view of the physical extension of the territory.” The phenomenon is due to the propaganda mechanism unleashed from early dates and during the war in some cities that formed the select geography of the strategic points of the military uprising. Among them stands out Burgos, Pamplona, Seville, Salamanca or Valladolid, as well as Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The catalog released this week and to which the Canary Islands have had access Now remember that four scenarios were chosen in Tenerife to exalt the regime’s propaganda, among them, the capital of Tenerife, which has concentrated the two largest examples that have lasted over time: it is the esplanade for access to the port and the crossroads between Rambla de Santa Cruz (formerly Rambla del General Franco) and Avenida de Francisco La Roche, (now it is proposed to eliminate this denomination). Along with the exaltations that arose in the city, other scenarios are mentioned where these Francoist vestiges no longer survive: Las Cañadas del Teide and the place of Las Raíces in La Esperanza (current municipality of El Rosario).
Navarro, Guerra Palmero and Peralta insist that “the participation of different sectors close to General Franco in his position as military commander of the Canary Islands with residence in Tenerife gave rise to the early proliferation of a series of initiatives to obtain all kinds of recognition and honors”. At the same time, a good number of monuments devoted to the figure of General Franco on Mount Teide (1936), to the fallen of the Tenerife garrison in Santa Cruz de Tenerife (1943-47), to the site of Las Raíces in the municipality of El Rosario (1936), or General Franco in Santa Cruz de Tenerife (1964). However, the main and oldest claim was the recognition of the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife as “capital of the Uprising”. In this way, it is recorded in an agreement of the Managing Commission of the Cabildo de Tenerife, which did not accept the first proposal that Valladolid be designated to hold that recognition. In that document it was argued that “this honor corresponds to Santa Cruz de Tenerife, in whose town the National Movement began in the early hours of last July 18 and the glorious General Franco signed the manifesto in which he informed the country of his patriotic decision.
The minutes of the Managing Commission of the Cabildo de Tenerife date from December 17, 1936 and on the same date an agreement is included in which it is proposed to initiate a file to “gather information about all the contributions made by Tenerife both the army as well as other welfare and charitable activities and include the list of soldiers from the island who died in the war”. The objective was “to offer a tribute to Franco by bringing together in a brochure all the initiatives carried out during the war period, including cash contributions, donations, cooperation and to record the enthusiasm of the youth of Tenerife who, voluntarily, or in mobilized replacements, they have offered their blood to the Homeland”, is collected in the documents provided by the catalog of vestiges. In another of the minutes, an allusion is made to the proposal of military honors with the rank of captain general to the Virgin of La Candelaria, which “is associated with the use that military and Falange sectors had made since July 1936 and during the war, in various commemorations, in which the image of the patron saint of the island had taken part”.
As a historical context of the propaganda work that was carried out on the island of Tenerife and especially in the city, the constitution of the Canary Islands Economic Command, created on August 5, 1941 with the appointment of General Ricardo Serrador Santés, is mentioned in this study. , who presented himself as “hero of the Alto del León campaign”. Upon his death in 1943, General García-Escámez e Iniesta was designated “also a military hero, in this case in the port of Somosierra”.
A circuit of memorial emblems
Historians point out that from the period of the Spanish Republic (1931-36) sectors of the Spanish Falange made approaches to the Fascist Regime in Italy, for which they established contacts with Mussolini, whose emblems and propaganda activities took shape in the actions developed by this group politician on the eve of war. After the coup d’état, architecture acquired a symbolic value of the first order, “both due to the exaltation of the dictator and some of the main personalities of the Regime, as well as of Victoria, the fallen and the organisms of the dictatorship and the single party , FET-JONS, who acted in housing matters”. In fact, the house became one of the objects of propaganda and recruitment of adhesions of the dictatorship, “as an exponent of its social work.” The main objectives that are highlighted with this policy are to spread participation in the Civil War, condemn broad sectors of society and contribute to writing history “so that it would serve as support for the new order established after the war.”
First, the actions consisted of replacing the democratic memory of the Republic, changing streets, but also with the construction of monuments and memorial spaces. The catalog of vestiges reflects that an urban setting was achieved with a good number of landmarks in large areas “reconverted into settings with a strong military imprint, with an air of a military camp in different areas”. In total, the Monument to the Fallen in the Plaza de España (1943-1947); the General Serrador Bridge and the Market of Our Lady of Africa (1943); the García-Escámez neighborhood (1945); the Monument to Franco on the Rambla de Santa Cruz (1964-67); the Barrio de la Victoria or the Barrio del Marqués de Somosierra.
The Monument to the Fallen was one of the central episodes of “an entire program of impositions” that transformed the entire city into a scene of military references occupying the main roads programmed by the planning of the Republic. The main square of the capital was an emblem of the city of the twentieth century with its own civil facilities of the new jurisdictional regime derived from the Republic. A square that came to be occupied by the Fallen complex “thus reversing its newly conquered notion of civility to become the main reference of the military action that led to the war”, explains the study.
On the other hand, the Economic Command claimed as its own the extension of the city to the south side of the Santos ravine, which had been programmed during the Republic through its alignment project. It was a new market facility and a social housing program, which later gave rise to the memorial fragment to General Serrador, which includes the bridge, the municipal market, the development of workers’ housing and the officers’ residence also built on the boulevard East side of the market. The projected promotion of working-class housing begun during the Republic on the Vía de Enlace (current Avenida 3 de Mayo) was continued with a promotion by the National Housing Institute in what is known as Barriada de la Victoria. The complex was called Barriada de García-Escámez y de Somosierra, “nucleus in which the most complex patrimonial involvement in the city has taken place by using the temple built to serve the community of the inhabitants of the neighborhood as a burial place for the general” , details the catalog, which now dictates the need for the monumental elements of the lions and the commemorative tombstones they contain that “must be removed” from public space.
The circuit of memorial emblems to “the victory” is closed by the Monument to the Caudillo, which was located on plots of military property ceded to the city council of the capital at the confluence of what was then called Rambla del General Franco and Avenida de Francisco La Roche that leads to the Plaza de España and the Monument to the Fallen. “This is the most exaggerated exponent of euphemistic flattery by personifying General Franco as an idealized figure of a young crusader presenting his sword on the figure of an archangel who takes flight from the top of the island.”
While in other monuments the experts propose to eliminate elements of exaltation and adapt it to the Law of Historical Memory, in the case of the one known as the monument to Franco there is no doubt that it must be removed to comply with the law and out of respect for the victims of Francoism . The document concludes that “the eventual technical and artistic merit of the sculptural pieces does not allow their removal to be avoided because their contextualization is unfeasible, taking into account the code of sacralization associated with the figure of the dictator and the collection of false historical and symbolic arguments. developed as a whole.
Vestiges that still remain
Santa Cruz de Tenerife has been in the news in recent weeks due to its delay in adapting to the Historical Memory Law. In addition to the Monument to the Fallen, the Monument to Franco or the Francoist elements in the Africa Market, the catalog of vestiges promoted by the General Directorate of Heritage of the Government of the Canary Islands, dependent on the Ministry of Education and Culture, has revealed that in Almost 80 traces of Francoism still exist in the city, including streets, busts, sculptures, names of schools as well as honors and distinctions. The mayor of the city, José Manuel Bermúdez, has polemicized this law, assuring that he will resort to this catalog because he considers that the city has been stigmatized by not incorporating this catalog the vestiges of the 88 municipalities of the Canary Islands, which in their majority have been adapted to the Law and do not have monuments to Franco like this city. The Deputy Minister of Culture, Juan Márquez, has insisted that “what stigmatizes a city is having a statue of Franco in its streets.”
*Franco left for Tetouan in the fast dragon from Gran Canaria.
