La Laguna City Council will carry out a research project on historical memory, which under the initial title of Memories of Franco’s repression in San Cristóbal de La Laguna, aims to document various aspects that occurred in the Civil War and the subsequent Franco dictatorship in the municipality, especially related to the repression of women and the places linked to this period. The development of the project has received a grant of 10,000 euros from the Cabildo de Tenerife.
The historian responsible for this research project is the doctor in Contemporary History Luana Studer Villazán, who will analyze archival, bibliographic, photographic and oral sources to carry out this work on the history of La Laguna, according to the press release sent by the Consistory.
The Councilor for Historical Heritage, Elvira Jorge (Avante), assures in a note that it is a project “that will make it possible to make the truth known and thus begin to contribute to restoring the dignity that was stolen from the victims when violence was inflicted on them , economic, social repression…». And she adds: “Knowing this truth will improve coexistence, contribute to justice and avoid reproducing the same and very serious errors that occurred in the past, the result of fanaticism.” The project, in addition, “will provide information on the most significant places related to the local Historical Memory,” says the councilor.
From the Consistory they also announce a second publication on the geographical and patrimonial places of the municipality linked to the Second Republic, the Civil War and the Franco regime. The Councilor for Historical Heritage maintains that «given the small number of publications dedicated to this period, this research work has a clear informative vocation: it will be a didactic resource to work with educational centers; it will allow to inform visitors interested in a tourism of historical nature; and will inform the Laguna citizens in general, in many cases unaware of the contemporary past of the municipality.
Until now, the City Council has been working on the removal of the latest recognitions of Francoism from its public space. One of the most recent decisions was for two streets to stop bearing the names of Francoist figures: Manuel Lora-Tamayo and Narciso really Marrero. On that occasion, in 2021, it was agreed that the portraits would be removed from a room of the Town Hall attached to the plenary hall of the mayors during the dictatorship.
