Democratic memory: that is what laws are for

The event that took place last September 5th in Santa Coloma de Farners, in homage and restitution of the memory of the two Catalan nurses, Daria and Mercè Buxadé, murdered by the fascists on September 5th, 1936, in Manacor and buried in the Son Coletes cemetery, has been possible due to a confluence of facts and forces that must be valued as a whole. There is, without a doubt, the perseverance of their nephew, Carles Buxadé, who has dedicated his life to recovering their history. There is the work of researchers Antoni Tugores and Jaume Miró, who have contributed to reconstructing it. There is the La Bulla association of Santa Coloma de Farners, which has returned the memory of its neighbors. And there is the task of Memòria de Mallorca, of people and entities that make it possible for the victims of Francoism to cease to be invisible.

But above all, there are the laws. The Democratic Memory Law turned into an institutional responsibility what until then depended above all on the will and persistence of family members, historians, and associations. It established the duty to recognize the victims, investigate them, repair them, and preserve their memory. And the Graves Law provided a framework for exhumations and the recovery of the remains of the missing. In fact, the fourth phase of the Graves Plan made it possible, at Son Coletes, to recover the remains of Daria and Mercè, among other women. That is what laws are for. To convert a moral duty into a public obligation. So that reparation does not depend on individual efforts. And so that recovering the victims of a dictatorship is a public policy and not a matter of partisan sensitivity.

That is why what has happened in the Balearic Islands since the PP has been governing, with Vox as a partner, is so worrying. The Democratic Memory Law has been repealed, and although the Government has continued the actions of the Graves Plan that were already tendered – hence why the bodies of Son Coletes could be recovered – its discourse on memory is ambiguous.

It is true that the Director General of Institutional Relations, Xisca Ramis, attended the event in Santa Coloma de Farners. But it is also true that the Executive branch defends memorials for the victims of all sides, an approach that belittles the victims of fascism and minimizes the pain of families for events that were silenced during the 40 years of dictatorship and, subsequently, by the aftermath of it. It is not about denying any victim, but about not distorting history. The recovery of the bodies of Daria and Mercè and the event in Santa Coloma demonstrate that memory is not a thing of the past. It is a question of democracy. This is what memory laws are for: so that what was kept hidden for decades, and whose coming to light depended on the will of a few, becomes an obligation for all.