This is how the good Franco monument in Pamplona is reworked into a middle for denouncing fascism | Culture | EUROtoday

The keys that open the Monument to the Fallen of Pamplona are small and are held by a easy, nondescript key ring. It is paradoxical that they open the large steel doorways of the second largest monument of Franco’s exaltation in Spain after the Cuelgamuros Valley. The constructing, whose official title is Navarra a sus Muertos en la Crusade, closes off the town’s most essential pedestrian thoroughfare and is surrounded by a big plaza and roughly similar-looking buildings. It has been closed for years and, inside, silence is the protagonist. You can solely hear the fluttering of the pigeons that take refuge within the highest space, which is accessed by slim stairs that present the results of lack of use: excrement, cobwebs and a few damaged glass within the stained glass home windows. Above, the big dome that marks the city panorama of Pamplona.

It is adorned by a set of mural work of just about 700 sq. meters with which the educational Ramón Stolz needed to characterize Navarra’s dedication to the Crusade and the Catholic faith. The frieze that helps it reads in massive letters – some nonetheless retaining an intense purple coloration -: “You know, Lord, how much we have worked in the battles, as well as my brothers and my father’s house to defend our law and for the sanctuary… ( Book 1 Maccabees XIII, 3). In the lower part, the noble area, there are still the white panels that held the last exhibition held there and, on the walls, beige planks and black canvas cover the marbles with the names of the more than 4,500 Navarrese dead from the rebel side. after the coup d’état of ’36. A good part of these elements are going to disappear after the municipal political agreement reached by EH Bildu, Geroa Bai and PSN to redefine the building and turn it into a complaint center of fascism.

In the architectural field, the pact contemplates the demolition of the crypts in which the coup generals Emilio Mola and José Sanjurjo were buried until 2016. A “specific action” will be carried out on the exterior dome and the exterior arches and marbles on which the names of the dead rebels are inscribed will be demolished. Soltz’s paintings will be covered and “viewings restricted to academic, pedagogical and/or tutorial functions” will be permitted.

The pact does not include a specific project, but rather calls on the City Council to organize a new contest of ideas that contemplates these bases. The Official College of Vasconavarro Architects has not agreed on an institutional opinion, but its president, Santiago Iribarren, believes “that the solution does not involve a new contest of ideas,” but rather through the resolution of the one already started a few years ago. “49 teams participated, seven projects were selected, it was interrupted due to an appeal already resolved and we consider that it should be finalized by declaring a winner. The opposite is a lack of respect.” Iribarren “is struck by the fact that symbolic intention is given to the dome” because he considers that “the greatest symbolic load of the building resides in its stairs and platforms, which give it a monumental character.”

Inside, the choice to permit restricted viewing of the work is prime for Marta Rodríguez Fouz (Coruña, 52 years previous), professor of Sociology at UPNA, specialist in post-violence and researcher at I-Communitas: “The key is that have the dimension of recognition. It’s not so much about forcing the way you have to look, but rather about eliminating everything that may have homage. “It can be interesting as an element that shows the ways in which fascism is reproduced and symbolizes certain values.”

The political agreement also contemplates removing the building’s status as a monument and converting it into a center for denouncing fascism and for democratic memory that will be called Maravillas Lamberto, in honor of the 14-year-old girl who in 1936 was raped and shot by Falangists along with to his father. This new entity will collaborate with the Documentary Center and with the Oroibidea digital archive of the Navarro Memory Institute. Maider Maraña (Donosti, 43 years old), director of Baketik, an organization that promotes processes of social transformation and conflict resolution, thinks it is positive: “It goes from being a place of homage to a fascist ideology to being a center in which “question violence and honor the memory of the victims.” Maraña recollects that the United Nations acknowledges the proper to reminiscence and considers that the political settlement has that goal, though he factors out: “Institutions have the obligation to recover these spaces, but they have to create formulas to dialogue and make the voice of the people effective.” victims and survivors. It isn’t just about going to the place a couple of days a yr or giving their testimonies, however it’s even about producing shared decision-making mechanisms.” This shouldn’t be normally straightforward, he acknowledges, “because the victims do not have just one voice, they do not always want the same thing.”

This is what has happened in Navarra, where this dialogue has been non-existent, says Amaia Lerga (Tafalla, 38 years old), president of the Association of Relatives of Those Shot in Navarre (Affna-36). Memorial associations have been demanding the demolition of the monument for years and are upset at having found out about the agreement through the media. What hurts the most, Lerga confesses, is that they use the name Maravillas. Josefina Lamberto, his sister, “expressed throughout her life a clear position in favor of the elimination” of this monument and now “the name of her relative has been used as a reference for a space that she wanted to throw away.” “This is not understanding what the victims or their families are saying,” he adds. “The memory of Josefina and Maravillas will be found sooner in any other grave, in any other space and place of memory, than in this building,” he determines. There is no unanimous opinion among the people belonging to these associations. At least thirty of them have signed a manifesto in which they are in favor of giving new meaning to the building, even if only “to unblock the controversy.” They consider that “putting emphasis on the causes that made the coup uprising possible and that the Franco dictatorship endured from an anti-fascist vision” is a “historic step.” Of course, they insist on rejecting the declaration of this building as a place of memory.

There continues to be an extended course of for this venture of resignification to materialize. In the approaching weeks, the three teams will carry to the Navarrese Parliament a proposal to change the regional rules on historic reminiscence – authorized in 2013 – and alter the circumstances to decrease the extent of safety of the property. Once authorized, the Pamplona City Council – proprietor of the constructing – will request to change its degree of safety and the General Directorate of Culture of the Provincial Government, by way of the Príncipe de Viana establishment, will challenge a compulsory report. Once the constructing is discontinued, work will start on a particular venture.

Who was Maravillas Lamberto?

In Navarra there was no warfare entrance. There was robust financial and social repression that resulted in additional than 3,000 deaths and compelled disappearances. Like that of Maravillas and Vicente. On August 15, 1936, at two within the afternoon, knocks sounded on the Lambertos’ door, within the city of Larraga. Two armed civil guards pressured the daddy, Vicente, to accompany them. His daughter Maravillas, 14, needed to go along with her father to search out out what they had been doing to her. The subsequent morning, the mom, Paulina, requested the couple’s different two daughters, ages 7 and 10, to go to the dungeon to carry them breakfast.

The little woman, Josefina, remembered a long time later the dialog with a Falangist: “Your father no longer needs him. “Your father is no longer here.” Shortly afterward they discovered that Maravillas had been raped repeatedly within the municipal jail and that father and daughter had been shot in a close-by space. They by no means discovered Vicente’s physique and discovered {that a} neighbor had burned Maravillas’ physique after discovering it partially eaten by canines. When Josefina turned 87, in 2018, she gave her final interview in SER Navarra, the place she recalled the ache she suffered: “They took everything from us, nothing more than out of envy.” His mom additionally went to jail and several other neighbors took the chance to ransack their home. Josefina remembered that the neighbor who “took the mare and the wheat from them stood in the middle of the street shouting: We have to kill the little Chinese because the little Chinese are getting big!” Until her dying in 2022, Josefina, founding father of Affna-36, was one of the crucial acknowledged historic reminiscence activists in Navarra. He was clear about what to do with the monument: “It’s horrible. Let them throw it away.”