Mallorca archive plan seeks to save Franco-era memories
Mallorca could bring records, witness testimony and objects recovered from exhumations together in one archive under a proposal unveiled in Palma on Friday. Lawyer Catalina Moragues presented the idea for a Balearic Archive of Democratic Memory at Ateneu Popular La Fonera. It would preserve and make accessible material from the 1936 coup, the Civil War and Franco dictatorship.
The proposal forms part of Moragues’s report on the Govern’s policies on democratic memory. Drawing on United Nations observations and the 2030 Agenda, it reviews the human-rights basis of memory laws, their rollout in the Balearics and how they stood up to 2024.
Records and testimony in one place
The archive would have two strands. One would keep documents produced under the Balearic laws of 2016 and 2018, including minutes from the two technical commissions, studies and issued protocols.
The other would collect material created during the July 1936 coup, the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship. Victims’ and memory associations have also proposed an audiovisual section to preserve accounts from people subjected to repression, including testimony gathered by the Memorial de la Palabra project.
A museum section would protect objects found in exhumations, along with other items linked to repression.
Report attacks repeal of memory law
Moragues’s report also calls for projects begun in the previous term to continue, and for existing policies to be “consolidated, completed and improved”.
It says this year’s repeal of the democratic memory law removes legal and regulatory advances tied to the rights of Civil War and dictatorship victims. The report describes that repeal as a breach of obligations that Balearic public administrations, as part of the Spanish state, must respect.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee and successive special rapporteurs have repeatedly said democratic memory is “a matter of state”, the report notes. It says public action in justice, education and culture should be shaped by that duty to prevent impunity and the repeat of grave human-rights and international humanitarian-law violations.
Source: Europa Press / Mallorca.com