Prohens supports repealing the Memory Law and will pay tribute to the victims of Republican bombings.

PalmThe PP and Vox's abolition of the Democratic Memory Law continues. President Marga Prohens defended the law's repeal this Tuesday, which Parliament considered with the votes of the right. "The dictator [Francisco] Franco died before you and I were born, and the only ones who are chatting are those on the left," she said in response to a parliamentary question from the MÉS leader for Mallorca, Lluís Apesteguia. At the same time, she announced that the Catalan government is preparing a tribute to the victims of the Republican air force bombings of Palma during the Civil War.

Prohens (who was born in 1982, seven years after the dictator's death) has also accused the eco-sovereignist of keeping "silent in the face of living dictators" and of not having congratulated Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. The head of the Executive made these statements minutes before the vote on the consideration of the elimination of the Memory Law, which is part of her pact with the far right in exchange for the 2025 budget.

The Popular Party defended that the Memory Law is not necessary, and insisted that the Law. "We have worked for two years to execute the IV Plan for Mass Graves, we have awarded the V, we have exhumed 22 bodies and identified 13 victims," she claimed. For his part, Vox's deputy spokesperson, Sergio Rodríguez, considered that the law he wants to eliminate is "unfair" because it does not recognize "the victims of both sides." "You want to cover up the left's past with your hands stained with blood," he said: "Now that you are making the word 'genocide' so fashionable, what was, if not a genocide, the murder of more than 7,000 religious people during the war?"

While the Law on Graves focuses on the recovery of bodies (with exhumations, a census of the missing and a map of graves), the Memory Law also regulates a census of victims of Franco's regime and one of Francoist symbols (Vox goes last year, hiring an advisor accused of defending the dictatorship) and promotes scientific research and the dissemination of democratic memory. It also promotes reparations and recognition for victims, the protection of documentary and bibliographic heritage, and the creation of memorial spaces and itineraries and educational activities. It also establishes a sanctioning regime for acts contrary to democratic memory and apology for Francoism, among many other issues.

Outside the Parliament, the president of the Democratic Memory platform, Maria Antònia Oliver, contradicted Prohens. "The Memory Law and the Mass Graves Law go together," she said. "We separated them because we urgently needed the Mass Graves Law to be approved in 2016, because our victims' families were dying, and the other was approved in 2018," she noted. In this sense, she considered it incomprehensible that "a mass grave is exhumed to recover the bodies and the memory of the victims is not recovered."

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Apesteguia criticized the president for her change of heart. Prohens agreed to keep the law in force last December in exchange for the left's support for two decree laws. However, months later, he promised again to repeal it during the negotiations over the accounts with Vox. Therefore, the eco-sovereignty activist asked her when her "word" expires: "There are yogurts with a longer expiration date," he reproached her. He also warned the president about the proliferation of pro-Franco rhetoric on social media. "Someone needs to explain to young people what the Civil War was; we want them to be indoctrinated in democracy," he said. "We are doing what we told the citizens we would do," Prohens responded.

On behalf of the PSIB (Socialist Party), MP Omar Lamin lamented Prohens's "complicity with the far right." The Socialist pointed out that the Speaker of the Parliament, Gabriel Le Senne (Vox), is under investigation for an alleged hate crime for tearing down an image of Picornell in the chamber. "What has Prohens done? Keep quiet and keep him sitting," he said (the PP opposed his removal from office). "History does not forgive betrayal, and neither does the memory of the victims," he said. The independent MP for Formentera, Llorenç Córdoba, who usually guarantees support for the PP, voted against the repeal of the law on this occasion. "This is not democracy, it's cynicism," he said.