Sumar wants a plaque at the headquarters of the Community of Madrid to remember Franco's torture

Sumar will ask Congress for its support to declare the Puerta del Sol building, current headquarters of the Presidency of the Executive of the Community of Madrid, to be declared a place of Democratic Memory, since during the Franco regime it housed the offices and dungeons of the General Directorate of Security (DGS).

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
27 March 2024 Wednesday 16:30
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Sumar wants a plaque at the headquarters of the Community of Madrid to remember Franco's torture

Sumar will ask Congress for its support to declare the Puerta del Sol building, current headquarters of the Presidency of the Executive of the Community of Madrid, to be declared a place of Democratic Memory, since during the Franco regime it housed the offices and dungeons of the General Directorate of Security (DGS).

Through a non-law proposal, which will be debated and voted on in the Constitutional Commission of the Lower House, the Sumar deputies want to urge the Government of Pedro Sánchez to place a plaque in a "visible" place and in which the names of the victims and the organizations of origin, "in memory of the people who suffered violence, humiliation, persecution or deprivation of liberty for exercising their fundamental rights, for defending freedoms and democracy."

As they explain, their proposal is contemplated in the Democratic Memory Law, and they include in it the idea of ​​"enabling" in that same building the corresponding informational and pedagogical elements, emphasizing the work that numerous associations have been carrying out for "decades."

And, as Sumar recalls, the old Royal Post Office, now the headquarters of the Presidency of the Community of Madrid, was occupied during the years of the Franco dictatorship by the DGS, functioning as a "torture center" and was later It became the headquarters of the General Information Brigade.

"Its facilities became a detention and torture center through which thousands of people passed for political and social reasons, for fighting for freedoms and democracy, for their religious convictions, their sexual orientation or for their mere disagreement with the regime" , exposes the initiative collected by Europa Press.

That is why they regret that no action has been carried out in memory of all the people "detained, tortured and murdered during the Franco dictatorship."

In his opinion, this action would be "one more step" in the reparation of the victims and "homolgary" between the Community of Madrid and other European capitals that have been the scene of the barbarity of Nazism and fascism, where there are plaques or museums that They remember the people who fought for their liberation.

Furthermore, in this same initiative those of Yolanda Díaz also ask to promote an act of "democratic rehabilitation" of the figure of the former leader of the PCE, Julián Grimau, 60 years after his execution.

In this case, they ask for a plaque to be placed in his memory, but in the current Senate building, on Calle del Reloj, where the Military Court was located in which the "summary" trial was held and the sentence was handed down. of death against Grimau.

"The trial - of Julián Grimau - was plagued by irregularities even with the Franco laws of the time," they claim from Sumar and recall that "after just five hours of trial, without deliberation, the death sentence was handed down, as as planned", despite the fact that it would have been "up to him" to be tried by the Public Order Court and not by military jurisdiction.