Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-07-04-Speech-2-010"
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"en.20060704.4.2-010"2
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"Mr President, having listened to your speech, I would like to ask what was the spirit behind Franco and his regime? We all know that spirit. It is the spirit of intolerance, of contempt for mankind, it is the spirit that smashes democratic institutions, the spirit that hates everything that is not how it would like it to be. Behind Franco and his regime was contempt for mankind and deadly propensity for violence. Unconditional subjection to its own ideology or death — that was the message of the Franco regime. It was not a Spanish message, however, because when Franco seized power 70 years ago my country had already been suffering under the Hitler dictatorship for three years and Mussolini had already been ruling for 14 years in Italy. At that time, the fascist movement of which Franco was a — primarily militaristic – part already existed all over Europe.
The civil war was not just a Spanish civil war. Spain was its main territory and the Spanish people its main victims, but the Spanish people were also its hostages in a trial run for a greater war. Guernica and the Condor Legion are and remain a blot on my country’s history.
The youth of the 1930s were a glorious page in European and world history, travelling to Spain to defend democracy of their own accord. Ernest Hemingway created an unforgettable literary monument to that generation. The famous American writer Arthur Miller once said that in the 30s the word Spain was an explosion. It was about overcoming clerical feudalism and setting the spirit of freedom and tolerance against the demon of intolerance.
If we think of Spain today, we on Europe’s left think of the countless victims that civil war claimed from among our ranks — but not only from ours. There were also Christian Democrats, Liberals and Republicans who stood against that intolerance. Franco was opposed worldwide by the whole community of thinkers and nations, who opposed that totalitarian desire for subjugation that was associated with Franco. Franco lost.
If we can take stock of the situation here in this House 70 years later, then I would draw your attention to the fact that since direct elections were introduced three Presidents of the European Parliament have been Spaniards: one conservative Christian Democrat and two Social Democrats. If today, 70 years later, a Spanish President of Catalan origin is able to say, on behalf of the elected representatives of 25 nations of Europe, that European integration is a victory over intolerance and bondage, then, 70 years on, we can say that freedom has won and Franco has lost. Nothing better could happen to Europe!"@en1
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