About Franco: “I pay homage to his memory; and I believe that the best way to interpret his legacy is to march without stopping towards social justice objectives, that give strength and unity to our people.”

Translation by Diarmuid Breatnach from article in Castillian by DANILO ALBIN @danialri BILBAO 06-30-2019 08:17 AM Updated: 06-30-2019 08:17

          There are things that time cannot erase. Words and phrases that seem forgotten but, nevertheless, are still there. Written and permanent. The Royal House offers the collection of speeches by Juan Carlos de Borbón in its digital archive. In those archives, available for those who wish to find them, are the Francoist statements that the now emeritus king pronounced in the first steps of his reign and about which, according to what different historians emphasise, he never made any self-criticism.

November 22, 1975. Two days after the death of the Dictator, Juan Carlos offers his message of remembrance: “An exceptional figure enters history. The name of Francisco Franco will be a milestone of Spanish events and a milestone to which it will be impossible not to refer in order to understand the key to our contemporary political life,” the King proclaimed.

There he showed his “respect and gratitude” towards he who “for so many years assumed the heavy responsibility of leading the government of the State”. “His memory will be for me a demand for behavior and loyalty to the functions I assume in the service of the country. It is a feature of great and noble peoples to know how to remember those who dedicated their lives to the service of an ideal. Spain will never be able to forget who, as a soldier and statesman, consecrated all his existence to its service,” he added.

The file on the website of Casa Real offers another speech by the King of that same day, in that case addressed to the Armed Forces. “I express my gratitude and gratitude to our Generalissimo Franco, who with so much dedication and commitment has led you until now, giving us a unique example of love for Spain and a sense of responsibility,” he said then.

Twenty-four hours later, Juan Carlos went to the National Brotherhood of Combatants, another self-declared Francoist entity. He promised them “to march forward with determination on the path traced, perfecting and complementing the work Franco did“. “Today, before you, who were his soldiers, I pay homage to his memory; and I believe that the best way to interpret his legacy is to march without stopping towards social justice objectives, that give strength and unity to our people,” he said.

For the historian and researcher Pablo Sánchez León, these speeches by the monarch “show a preconstitutional legitimacy (? Trans) of the Royal Household”. In any case, Sánchez León believes that if they are available in the digital archive, the monarchical institution “has an opportunity to tell a different story of itself”. How? “If they want to preserve those speeches there, something must be added,” he says.

In his opinion, these historical documents should be accompanied by a “furious criticism”. In that sense, he points out that there is a “repository” of Juan Carlos as former monarch, and that “the speeches that speak of Franco should be accompanied by a text in which he is allowed to say that it is abhorrent that there was been a king who once said those things”.

None of that is in the list of of the king’s speeches. “The year that ends has left us with a stamp of sadness, which has had as its centre the illness and the loss of what was our Generalissimo for so many years”, can be read in the Christmas speech of 1975, which also highlighted “the enormous human qualities and feelings full of patriotism” on which Franco “wanted to base all his performance at the head of our nation.”

For Emilio Silva, president of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH), the Royal House should also include in its file “the video of King Juan Carlos swearing to uphold the principles of the Movement” (i.e the Spanish fascist Movement – Trans). “If there were an exercise in real transparency, it would be told where that (Head of State – Trans) succession comes from,” he told Público.

“The reality is that the king was installed as successor by Franco”.

“Surely it is not the best thing for a democratic system to see texts extolling Franco on the website of of the Head of State,” says Julián Sanz, professor of Contemporary History at the University of Valencia. In any case, he remarks that “the reality is that the King was installed as successor by Franco and Juan Carlos’s relationship with the dictatorship has never been officially reviewed, nor has he abjured it.”

“Generalissimo” and “Head of State”

          “My memory of the Generalissimo, who presided over this Military Passover for so many years and so much satisfaction when he met his comrades-in-arms,” reads the document “Words of His Majesty the King on the occasion of the Military Passover“, dated six January 1976. The following month, in Berga (Catalonia) he took advantage of the inauguration of the Baells Reservoir to argue that “the transformation that Spain has had in recent years of Franco’s mandate, cannot be stopped and all steps will be taken to allow this process to continue. “

The King kept referring to Franco as “Generalissimo” in July 1976, when he went to Santiago de Compostela to make the offering to the Apostle St. James. “Generalissimo Franco, who preceded me in the leadership of the State, personally presented this offering to you on several occasions,” he said then. Something similar happened that same month in Ferrol, where he recalled that this Galician town “was the birthplace of the Generalissimo, a great figure of our history, to whom I am honored to renew a public tribute in this city whose egregious name is forever linked to that of the most illustrious of his children. “

In February 1977 – just four months before the first democratic elections – the king took advantage of a visit to the General Military Academy to “pay tribute to the efforts of two great soldiers who had already gone down in history and who were the architects of the event that we celebrate: General Primo de Rivera, creator of the General Military Academy, and Generalissimo Franco, its first director”. (Primo de Rivera was also the founder of the fascist Falange organisation, which murdered unknown multitudes during and after the Anti-Fascist War, also known as the “Spanish Civil War” – Trans.)

In fact, the official biography of Juan Carlos de Borbón presented by the Royal House on its website also avoids referring to Franco as a dictator. “After the death of the former Head of State, Francisco Franco, Don Juan Carlos was proclaimed King on November 22, 1975, and delivered his first message to the nation in the Cortes, in which he expressed the basic ideas of his reign: democracy and to be the King of all Spaniards, without exception, “says the text.

“Reflects the past”

          For Sánchez León, the inclusion of these discourses without nuances is nothing more than “another example of the thin line of shadow that separates the absolutely abject and unconstitutional, typical of a criminal regime, from a constitutional order.”

The historian José Babiano does not object to the fact that “there is a set of discourses”, since “it reflects a past without twisting it”. In fact, he maintains that “it can help to contradict a sweetened version of the period, its role and of its transition”. “The first speeches are linked to the origin, and the origin is that it was Franco who appointed him. It would have been worse to remove them, because it would have been an attempt at a whitewash,” he said.

In this context, Babiano points out that while “he never repeated the praise (of Franco–Trans) of 1976, there was no self-criticism” about this type of discourse on the part of the King. “He did it when he had no choice in order to be the Head of State and once he gets there, all that is forgotten,” he said.

Público also contacted the Royal House to know if the possibility of contextualizing these speeches has ever been considered. To date we have received no response.

COMMENT — A SUPREME IRONY

Diarmuid Breatnach

Taking the history of the current Spanish monarchy into account (as referred to above) along with the judgement of the Supreme Court in June last, it is abundantly clear from the mouths of the executives of the State that the “Transition” to democracy, as many of its critics have said, was only ever the drawing of a veil over the fascist essence of the State. Of course, the actions of the State down through the years, whether under social-democratic government of the PSOE or right-wing of the PP, have given ample evidence of its nature.

In a judgement delivered last month (4^th June), the Spanish Supreme Court halted the planned exhumation of Franco’s remains and their transfer from the mausoleum in the Monument to the Fallen built by prisoner labour during the Dictator’s regime. In justification of its halting the operation that was to take place on June 10^th by order of Government, the Supreme Court declared that General Franco had been the Head of State since 1^st October 1936, that is to say, two months after the date on which he and other Generals, with the aid of military transport, armaments and personnel from two foreign powers (i.e Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy), launched their military-fascist armed coup against a democratically-elected government of the Spanish State, resulting in a bitter war of over two years with huge loss of life.

This decision of the Supreme Court constitutes a supreme irony. A dozen Catalan social and political activists have been on trial for months and are now awaiting verdict – the main charge against them is of “Rebellion”, which entails an attempt to overthrow the State through violent uprising. The Catalans in question called, not for the overthrow of the Spanish State but rather for independence for Catalonia — and did so peacefully; nevertheless they were charged with rebellion, kept in jail awaiting trial and are still there, awaiting verdict. In answer to a legal challenge by the Catalans’ Defence team, the Supreme Court decided the Catalans did have a case to answer on “rebellion”. Now the same court, in the same year, decides that Franco, who DID lead a violent overthrow of the State, was the legitimate Head of State barely two months after the coup he led and while the the democratically-elected government he was rebelling against still had another two years to go before it was overthrown.

end. 

SOURCES REFERENCE:

Original article in Castillian: https://www.publico.es/politica/casa-real-ofrece-matices-discursos-franquistas-rey-juan-carlos.html

Decision of Supreme Court re Franco “Head of State”: https://www.publico.es/politica/supremo-reconoce-franco-jefe-1-octubre-1936-plena-guerra-civil.html