The Law of Democratic Memory approved in 2022 establishes in its article 37 that if the elements included in the catalog of vestiges, prepared previously, are not voluntarily withdrawn or eliminated, the competent public Administration will automatically initiate the procedure for the withdrawal of said items. The application of this article to the Santa Cruz City Council is what the Government of the Canary Islands is consulting with its legal services.
“We are consulting if we can act to remove vestiges in the event that a city council does not do so, as long as the catalog is approved, even if it is not necessary, because the removal of vestiges is already included in the 2007 law.” This was explained by the Deputy Minister of Culture, Juan Márquez, in response to the dispute presented by the capital’s City Council against the approval of the Catalog of Francoist vestiges in the Canary Islands, and which, for now, only includes Santa Cruz.
Yesterday, the mayor of the capital, José Manuel Bermúdez, did not rule on this possible application of article 37, although he said that “if they do, I understand that they will do so in accordance with the regulations. They cannot skip the law, the same one that they approved in 2019, and that requires the approval of a regional strategy and catalogue, and not a catalog only for Santa Cruz, as if there were no vestiges in the rest of the Canary Islands”. The councilor concluded by noting that “this matter is being politicized a lot trying to point to a single capital and the rest seems to not exist.”
In any case, Bermúdez affirmed that Santa Cruz will comply with the law, something that it will do when the rest of the municipalities have their catalogs updated.
