Bildu asks Congress to withdraw the portraits of Manuel Fraga in application of the Memory Law

MADRID, 2 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Bildu parliamentary group has sent two letters to the tables of Congress and the Senate demanding that the portraits and busts that exist in the Chambers of the former president of Alianza Popular and former president of the Xunta de Galicia, Manuel Fraga Iribarne, be removed, given that he was Minister in the Franco dictatorship.

Bildu welcomes the entry into force of the Democratic Memory Law, the approval of which was agreed with the Government, since he considers that it is "totally incomprehensible and contrary" to the regulations that a Francoist minister has "the recognition and exaltation that the bust, room and paintings dedicated to Fraga" in public institutions with political and institutional relevance.

As they explain, the Congress has three paintings in honor of Fraga: one in the Constitutional Chamber together with the other speakers of the Magna Carta of 1978; another in the permanent exhibition of the Palace; and a third in the commission room that bears his name, and that Bildu also wants to rename. The Senate, for its part, exhibits a bust in the entrance hall of the hemicycle.

This claim will be seen at the next meeting of the Congress Table, where it was already rejected in its day to remove the portraits of the presidents of the Francoist Courts in line with the first Law of Memory. The then president of the Chamber, José Bono, refused to remove them, stressing that those portraits were not affected.

The new Democratic Memory Law orders to remove visibility from "portraits or other artistic manifestations of soldiers and ministers associated with the military uprising or the repressive system of the Dictatorship." Of course, he does not speak of the presidents of the Cortes.

In the case of Manuel Fraga, in addition to being a Franco regime minister, he was one of the protagonists of the Transition, rapporteur for the Constitution, founder of Alianza Popular and the Popular Party, leader of the opposition with Felipe González, and president of the Xunta de Galicia. elected by absolute majority on several occasions.

Bildu points to Fraga as "responsible for the forces of public order" in the events in Vitoria in 1976, when during the massacre of March 3, 1976, in which, as a result of a police intervention, five striking workers died they had locked themselves in the church of San Francisco de Asís in the capital of Alava. The abertzale formation has also requested a commission of investigation in Congress on this episode.