Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-21-Speech-1-112"
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"en.20080421.15.1-112"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, a memory of historical events is essential for the process of European construction. For this process to be fully successful, it is vital to understand that it represents the elimination of nationalism, totalitarianism, intolerance, autocracy and war, and the establishment of Europeanism, freedom, respect, democracy and peace as the values which govern the way we live together in Europe.
This is the lesson which we must teach the young people of today: the events of the past and the progress of the present, without hiding the crimes and mistakes which had to be overcome and pointing out the sacrifices entailed in overcoming them.
To know our history is the antidote to falling into the same trap twice.
It is only by knowing the truth, the whole truth, that we can move forward. We must firmly denounce the barbarities of our past without diminishing them, much less falsifying them; without falling into the Manichean logic of the Cold War, equating the West with good and Eastern Europe with evil. We will explain that there were democrats and totalitarians, but without hiding the fact that both Western and Eastern Europe had their totalitarians, both equally odious and criminal.
As a Spanish democrat, I sympathise with democrats who were victims of Stalinism in their countries, but I also ask them to show solidarity with those in Spain who lived through the oppression and suffering imposed by the dictatorship of General Franco.
We understand the tragedy of our fellow Europeans in Eastern Europe who went from one form of totalitarianism to another, but they must also understand our tragedy, which entailed maintaining the same criminal form of dictatorship and oppressing our people.
It is only by knowing the truth, the whole truth, that we can move forward. Lastly, we will remember that in Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam, Stalin was not alone; leaders of Western powers shared in his decisions. Therefore everyone had their share of responsibility for the partitioning of Europe and for the oppression, punishment and suffering that many millions of Europeans were to experience at the hands of one totalitarian regime or another.
Certainly central and eastern Europe bear a much greater responsibility for Stalinism, but it is also true that, for my country, the responsibility lay mostly with western democracies who accepted the Franco tyranny established by Hitler and Mussolini as part of their free world and were complicit in his misdeeds.
Mr President, we have achieved much together as a united Europe, and Europe will be that much stronger, and offer greater guarantees of freedom and democracy, the more its construction is founded on an awareness of the progress represented by sharing in a project which identifies and rejects the dark side of our past in order to build a future dedicated to the values which unite us."@en1
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