Edmundo Bal believes that in the Civil War “there were no good guys or bad guys” and that democracy arrived “respecting the rules of the dictatorship”

The spokesman for Citizens in Congress, Edmundo Bal, stated on Tuesday that Spain managed to move towards democracy “respecting the rules of the dictatorship.” In a press conference in the Congress of Deputies, commenting on the unblocking of the Democratic Memory Law after an agreement between the PSOE and Bildu, Bal accused the Socialists of wanting to “tear down” a “model” Transition. “We are disgusted by the Bildu-PSOE pact”, he has said.

For Bal, in the Civil War that followed General Franco’s coup there were “neither good nor bad”. “Neither memory nor the dead have adjectives. There are neither good nor bad. There is memory, that they are facts, and there are dead who were unjustly killed by both sides”, he emphasized.

In his opinion, this division was left behind “when Francisco Franco died and when Spain gave rise to a transition process that has not taken place anywhere in the world” and he added: “By respecting the rules of the dictatorship, we managed to move towards democracy and build an advanced democracy and recognize rights and freedoms with a lot of suffering, with a lot of sacrifice of our grandparents and our parents”.

The accusation against the coalition government of wanting to “destroy” the Transition is also being used these days by Vox: “Santiago Abascal already warned in 2019 that Pedro Sánchez’s objective was to rewrite history, destroy reconciliation between Spaniards and overthrow Felipe VI”, the far-right formation published today on its social networks.

already warned @Santi_ABASCAL in 2019 that Pedro Sánchez’s goal was to rewrite history, destroy reconciliation between Spaniards and overthrow Felipe VI.

We will not allow it. We will rebuild everything they destroy. pic.twitter.com/Rod96VvtbG

— VOX Parliamentary Group in Congress (@VOX_Congreso) July 5, 2022

The repression perpetrated by the rebel side under the orders of General Franco during the Civil War –and during the 40 years of dictatorship whose rules, according to Edmundo Bal, have been “respected”– was planned and used as a weapon of war: it is estimated according to the latest studies on 150,000 extrajudicial murders and the construction of 300 concentration camps where between 700,000 and one million Spaniards were imprisoned.

The repression on the Republican side, confined mainly to the year 1936, is estimated at 50,000 murders attributable to extremist groups and the absence of a single command capable of enforcing the law. The democratic government of the Republic came to judge those responsible for some of the massacres perpetrated in the territory under its control, as historian Carlos Hernández recalled in 2016.