Franco is also dead in Mallorca

And in Menorca, Ibiza, and Formentera. Franco has been dead for fifty years and is just as dead everywhere—here too—although Francoism had a strong and powerful hold in the Balearic and Pitiusas Islands. Mallorca, specifically, has the dubious honor of having been the first area of Spanish territory to join the illegal uprising of the military and Falangists against the Republican government, although this promptness is partly explained by the fact that a Mallorcan, Joan March, was among those who financed the coup.

Our current leaders remain determined to govern hand in hand with those who want the Balearic Islands to return to the control of the militarized, ultranationalist, and ultracatholic fascism that characterized Francoism. The People's Party (PP) and Vox have already begun the legislative process to repeal the Democratic Memory Law, using the subterfuge that it suffices to maintain the Law on Mass Graves, approved by the Balearic Parliament during Francina Armengol's first term as president. This is false, because both laws have different objectives: while the Balearic Law on Mass Graves is designed for the recovery of the remains of Franco's victims, the Democratic Memory Law, approved by the progressive majority in Congress, provides for a census of victims and another of Francoist symbols, in addition to promoting research and the dissemination of historical findings. These are not mutually exclusive or redundant laws; rather, they complement each other and are both equally necessary.

However, a few days ago, the bust of Aurora Picornell in El Molinar was vandalized again. It was the same people who did it as always, only this time Vox took the cynicism to an even higher level, condemning the attack on the effigy of the trade unionist and communist murdered by fascists, while suggesting it might have been a false flag attack by the "left." Very believable, coming from the party whose Speaker of Parliament is an individual awaiting trial for a hate crime for having destroyed, precisely, an image of Aurora Picornell and Les Roges del Molinar.

As obsessed as our leaders are with maintaining their appeal (at least as a tourist destination) to Germans, they could emulate some of their political behaviors: it's unthinkable that the conservative CDU, even with a chancellor as right-wing as Friedrich Merz, would ever form any alliance with the Holocaust-denying Alternative for Germany, which would be the openly Francoist equivalent of Vox. A month ago, Marga Prohens told Lluís Apesteguia that it was pointless to discuss Franco because the dictator died "before you and I were born," a curious assertion that contemporary history should have begun the day the current Prime Minister was born. The reality is that the People's Party (PP), and particularly the Balearic PP, has always been bothered by democratic memory because they have plenty to point to: not only the crimes committed by the right wing in the Balearic Islands in 1936 and afterward, but also the numerous and sustained efforts they made during the dictatorship (and also in democracy) to try to erase it.

For the moment, the People's Party (PP) commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the dictator's death with a Supreme Court conviction of the Attorney General, under the pretext of protecting the rights of a tax evader, a decision that has caused outrage in the civilized world. It is a disturbing reminder of the respect that the nationalist right has (and historically has) for the rule of law and democratic institutions.