Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-07-04-Speech-2-008"
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"en.20060704.4.2-008"2
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"The first item on the agenda will be a statement by myself; 70 years after General Franco's coup d'état in Spain, on 18 July 1936.
Europeans lost their lives on both sides and their names populate the cemeteries of Madrid, of Jarama, of Belchite, of Teruel, of Guadalajara, of the Ebro …, mythical names, where so many Europeans lie. Their fellow Europeans then went on to fight across the whole of Europe in order to liberate it For some people that war was the last great cause, for others it was a crusade.
I remember the crusade, the bishops saluting in the fascist style, surrounding generals at the entrances to the churches. I also remember the cemeteries full of people shot by one side or the other. It was the most passionate war, in which the ideologies of the 20th century confronted each other for the first time: democracy, fascism and communism. It was a religious war, but at the same time a class war, a revolution faced with a reaction.
It was a conflict that would continue in Europe and which also continued in Spain after the war had finished, because it was not just a war. There was also a long and hard post-war period, during which it was no longer a question of beating the enemy, since the war had been won, but rather of eradicating it, in order to maintain a system that lasted for a long time and kept Spain out of the process of democratisation and also the process of reconstruction experienced by Europe as a result of the Marshall Plan.
Many of our colleagues from the countries of the East remember the isolation they suffered as a result of Yalta and the iron curtain that separated them from the free, democratic and prosperous Europe, and that is what it was like. What people remember less, however, is that there were countries in the South of Europe – Spain and Portugal – that were also isolated from this movement and which remained under military dictatorships for a long time.
I remember that a US congressman once complained to me that the Europeans were not grateful for the efforts the United States had made to liberate Europe. I had to remind him that, as far as Spain was concerned, that effort was conspicuous by its absence, since they forgot to liberate us, because the military regime was useful to them during the Cold War.
Today I would like to use the words of Salvador de Madariaga, whose name appears on one of our buildings. ‘Before 1936’, he said, ‘all of the Spaniards lived in Spain and in freedom. ‘Today’, he said in 1954, ‘hundreds of thousands live in freedom exiled from Spain and the rest live in Spain exiled from freedom’.
Freedom returned in 1975. We began to build the foundations of a community based on democracy, freedom and the prospect of joining Europe. New generations have brought new political demands regarding the future and regarding the past. They have been faced with a war and a dictatorship that have been placed at one remove from them and, when we talk in Spain today about moral reparation for the victims, what we want to do is to discuss the active memory of our country, of our society, in order to accept our past fully, in order to honour all of the dead and in order to face the obvious truths, not to forget those events that are uncomfortable for us and not to allow ourselves to be consoled by untruths. These are painful wounds that have begun to heal in Europe, but which remain in many people’s memories, because at the time it was not possible to exorcise them.
That is the purpose of the event we are holding today here in the European Parliament: to face a past that lives on in part of our continent’s memory in order not to repeat yesterday’s mistakes, in order clear-sightedly to condemn those responsible for them, in order to pay tribute to those people’s victims and in order to acknowledge all those who fought for democracy, suffered persecution and promoted Spain’s return to Europe, as our common heritage.
As you know, a group of 200 Members signed a request for an oral question to the Commission and the Council explicitly calling for a debate on condemning the Franco regime on the 70th anniversary of General Franco’s coup d’état.
The Conference of Presidents did not accept that request and thought it more appropriate for the President to make a statement and for the various political groups then to express their opinions about the significance of this date. That is what we are doing now.
We are talking about a date that is now way back in history: 70 years have passed since 18 July 1936. That is almost the life expectancy of the generation of Spaniards who took part in the transition to democracy, a transition that is seen as a model, but whose success required selective forgetfulness and suspension of memory, which is now emerging in a process of recovery which is filling the book shops and even being enshrined in laws.
As I told you two years ago, I belong to that generation – like many of the Spanish Members here – and my personal relationship with the past inevitably determines my memory. This is an institutional statement, however, that I am making as President of the House, and what I say today must be a political act that goes beyond the personal. To bring our past to bear upon the present is an act of will which relates, above all, to the future that we want to build, and we want to build it not just upon the fragile and perishable memory of each of us, but upon History, which is not remembered, but rather learnt, and for that very reason can be shared.
History tells us that on that day part of the Spanish army – just a part of it – rose up against the Government of the Second Republic, democratically elected by the Spanish people in 1931. That put an end to a great hope, because that republic had come with the intention of promoting democracy and carrying out necessary wide-ranging reforms: agricultural reforms, military reforms, the separation of Church and State, the establishment of social security, Statutes of Autonomy for the regions, rights such as votes for women and divorce, within a profoundly patriarchal society.
Those reforms became a reference point for many European countries. They were a reference for democracy in Europe, the new frontier of democracy in Europe, a democracy that was facing difficult times at that point, having fallen in Italy, in Greece, in Poland, in Hungary and in Germany. That coup d’état did not just lead to a long and cruel civil war in Spain, therefore, but it also put an end to that hope for Europe that André Malraux had spoken of.
The war in Spain was not just a war and it was not just Spanish. It was a confrontation between two great views of the world. Yes, the two Spains of Larra and Machado were returning, and one of the two Spains froze the heart of each Spaniard. A war between Spaniards would not have lasted so long, however, simply because our own forces would not have allowed it.
The war was a decisive moment in the history of the world. It was of immense significance internationally. From 1936, Europe’s future participants in the Second World War came into direct or indirect conflict with each other during the Spanish civil war. Spain was the first great battle of the Second World War, the test bench for a war to come that would devastate Europe. For the first time in history civil populations were bombed. We all remember Guernica, but there were many Guernicas in Spain."@en1
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