After more than a year since the entry into force of the Democratic Memory law, ERC yesterday managed to close an agreement with the PSOE to apply the entire rule before June 30. The pact materialized in a joint amendment that was approved by the full Congress - with the votes of the majority of the investiture -, in which the central government is urged to step on the accelerator and put in place the pending measures, a since most of the deadlines set by the same rule have already been exceeded by far.
Among the commitments agreed between the Socialists and the Republicans is the sending to Congress, before June 30, of the report on compliance with Article 31 of the law, relating to conducting an audit of real estate looted by political, ideological reasons, of conscience or religious belief during the Civil War and the dictatorship and the rights to patrimonial content of which the Athenaeums, cooperatives or similar entities were entitled.
Another of the issues that the central government will have to inform Congress about before June 30 is how the procedure will be so that political parties can claim the restitution of the property and rights that were confiscated between 1936 and 1939 or the corresponding compensation. In reality, it is about complying with what had already been foreseen in the Historical Memory law of 2007, which projected the reform of the 1998 law by which the parties were already given back property that was taken from them by the Franco regime.
Another of the PSOE's commitments with ERC is that before June 30th, the catalog of Francoist symbols that the central government must draw up, as provided for in the law, must be presented to Congress, as well as the relative report to withdraw the bear. The same deadline is set for Congress to be informed of the state of the DNA bank intended to facilitate the exhumations of victims and of the report on the fulfillment of the actions for reparation and recognition of the victims who do forced labor under the Franco regime.
Another of the agreements is the appointment, until April, of the members of the technical commission that must study whether there were cases of human rights violations once the Constitution was approved, in December 1978, and until in 1983. Before the summer, the commission will have to inform Congress of the state of the work.
The creation of this commission was an agreement between the PSOE and Bildu to have their support for the Memory law in the last legislature. The period covered by the investigation could include allegations of torture and actions of the so-called dirty war against ETA, including the GAL at the beginning of the first government of Felipe González.
