One of the most memorable walks of my life was on the beaches of Normandy, a few years ago, in search of the shadows of those young Americans, Canadians and Britons who fell to liberate Europe from Nazism, just like so many young Russians on the Eastern Front. Another equally memorable walk was, together with my father and one of my cousins, through the homeland of my Murcian grandfather, expelled from there by misery and señoritos. And I have, finally, one more walk to consign: what I did trying to find the trail of my other grandfather through the streets of Havana, where he failed his adventure to become a rich American of those who, on returning to Catalonia, paid for schools, squares and choirs. I also have a walk on the beaches of Algiers, where the republicans exiled in 1939 were imprisoned by the French authorities. To walk is to set the memory in motion. Walking to connect with what happened and what - it doesn’t always link one thing to another - we were told, with the echoes of a scene that has faded. It is a necessity of every human being.
The commission approved the new law on Democratic Memory, a commitment by the Spanish Executive to update and reform the text that came into force in 2007, during the time of Rodríguez Zapatero. The popular ones froze and dodged all policies in this area, unfortunately. The new law has broad parliamentary support, from which the three right-wing parties have been demarcated, which was predictable. Among the arguments of those who oppose the policies of collective memory and the acts of restorative justice always appears an idea, as wrong as it is perverse: the past does not interest people, we cannot waste time with what happened -is yesterday when the problems of the present are pressing. "What's the point of spending public money to open Civil War pits when inflation is punishing citizens?" it is a type of phrase that is commonly heard.
This is not new. This discourse seeks to delegitimize any legislative advance or government initiative that does not fit with the ideology of those who question these policies. Now it is the memory, but it can be any matter that can be compared with other issues "that are urgent and that do interest people," to create an effect of grievance and alleged waste. There is a double measuring stick, of course. For example: no one questions the promotion of Galician in Galicia, but that of Catalan in Catalonia is always under suspicion according to some parties such as PP, Cs and Vox.
It is not a luxury to look back and address from public administrations, with rigor and pluralism, everything that has to do with the traumas of the recent past and its legal, economic, cultural and social effects. There are good and bad policies of memory (simplification and ideological reductionism should always be avoided), but the democratic state has a duty of memory towards us, the citizens. A duty that embraces the complexity of the recent past and avoids presentism while explaining the facts without disfiguring them. It is impossible to establish a homogeneous collective memory as memories are plural in every society, but it is desirable for democracy to claim its foundations when it becomes a commemorative and reminiscent agent. Everyone has the right to their own particular memory, but the pedagogy of a democratic collective memory cannot be done without marking the line between victims and perpetrators, which establishes the responsibilities of each other, without diluting them in an abstract and generic whole.
Historian Keith Jenkins reminds us that “people literally feel the need to root their today and their tomorrow in their yesterday” and adds that “in these pasts are explanations for present lives and programs are developed. for the future ”. Knowing the past is essential because, as this British historian explains, "history is the way people create, in part, their identities."
We come from where we come from. Francoism was more sociological than ideological (this makes it different from other European fascisms) and this has consequences for the consistency of our democratic system. Hopefully this new law of memory will allow us to look back without anger, but also without cheating.
