Thursday, March 28

If Fraga could, an ETA member can

Respecting the victims cannot be discretionary and hemiplegic. It is a mistake and a lack of respect for those who suffered political violence that Bildu has decided to take seven terrorists with blood crimes. Bildu had much more to choose from and choosing these seven people is a political message that they knew would be interpreted the way it has been. It is not acceptable that the neighbours, friends or relatives of the victims of these seven people have to live together watching the perpetrators of their loved ones in the political representation bodies of their municipalities. But it is something that has been happening in democracy since it was established. The systematic contempt for the victims of the dictatorship, of the political violence of the State and of repression and torture have been the fundamental marks with which our democracy has been established. No one has taken into consideration that these people are also hurt by the promotion of a civil guard implicated in the disappearance of Mikel Zabalza, that Billy the Child died with his medals, or that Manuel Fraga was a father of the Constitution, having been the highest responsible for the execution of Julián Grimau. The moral lines of political participation were written in our democracy with the blood of republicans.

That Bildu’s decision is not respectful of the victims can be said loudly by those of us who denounce in the same way the presence of Carlos García Juliá, murderer of the Atocha lawyers, on the Falange lists in Bilbao. We have the legitimacy of having always denounced the survival, permissiveness and exaltation by the right and State institutions of those who participated in political violence against those who thought differently as heirs, and on many occasions executors, of Franco’s genocidal plan to wipe out half the population that bothered them. Annihilate the red half.

The right does not have any hint of legitimacy to mark acceptable moral red lines in democracy or for political participation since they crossed them with their very existence after the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Spain is a marvelous country in which those who encourage a man who was on a boat with a Galician drug trafficker to end up as leader of the opposition and a civil guard convicted of torture to be promoted to the position of colonel-head of the Central Operative Unit. The left cannot be carried away by the cynicism and hypocrisy of the right, but show that it is different from them, better and more empathetic and, above all, cannot be stupid and focus on the frames that interest the reaction to play in the debates that interest your agenda. It is a mistake to present terrorists with blood crimes on the lists, it would have to be born from the considered and reasoned decision by Bildu that they should not have included them because it does not facilitate a healthy and effective coexistence. But if Fraga could, an ETA member can. The ETA members, at least and unlike Fraga, were tried and served their sentence in full.

There was never any regret in Manuel Fraga about his fierce, false and violent campaign against Julián Grimau. Because we must remember that Manuel Fraga fabricated false evidence against Julián Grimau by spreading a dossier with lies and slander that were defended in the summary process to facilitate his execution. Fraga was the hand that held the rifle to the executor and never rectified when he was a distinguished father of the Constitution and maximum person in charge of the right of this country in democracy. In a 2012 interview for The country He said the following when asked about his participation in the execution of the communist leader Julián Grimau:

Was that firing squad necessary?

That is a question I am not willing to answer. I repeat that if I did that it was because I considered it necessary to be able to do other things. And, of course, Grimau was not exactly a likeable character, far from it. I was very sorry about that and that that man had decided to come to Spain, but not precisely to collaborate in a peaceful transition but to the communist struggle, to everything that the communists had done in Spain until 1936.

But don’t you regret having collaborated in that execution?

No. I regret many things, but I only tell them to my confessor, and you obviously aren’t.

For the right it was not mandatory to show repentance if they had participated in the physical annihilation of the political adversary, they had a bull. In 2012 Manuel Fraga, as a PP senator, and being one of the historical leaders of the party, continued to maintain the defamation against Julián Grimau that he spread during the Franco regime to justify the execution of the retaliated communist. Nothing ever happened, nobody censored it, it never prevented him from doing politics. Fraga, the one who does not regret his participation in the execution of a political adversary, is still honorary president of the PP today. There have never been moral red lines for the PP in a democracy and they intend to draw them for their adversaries.



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