The Minister for Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, has announced that the Sectoral Conference on Democratic Memory will meet on 6 June ‘to distribute three million euros and continue with exhumations throughout Spain’.

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Sectoral Conference on Democratic Memory

‘The will is to maintain at least the 2023 budget line, with the budgets carried over to 2024, to meet the various requests, such as the one that the Canary Islands government is sending us.’

Ángel Víctor Torres made this announcement after meeting with the Minister of the Presidency, Public Administrations, Justice and Security of the Canary Islands Government, Nieves Lady Barreto, to discuss Democratic Memory.

The Minister for Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory has highlighted his willingness to sign a protocol, with the most advanced proposals that the Canary Islands Government has sent him: ‘We are talking about Fuencaliente where, together with the Canary Islands Government, the Cabildo and the Town Council, we are in a position to contribute an amount of close to 100,000 euros for exhumations and re-signification projects, and we will do the same with projects that come from different islands, such as the wells of oblivion in Arucas. Therefore, the meeting has been productive to talk about a community committed to the development of Democratic Memory’.

‘I always use my community, the Canary Islands, as an example, because there, all the administrations collaborate in exhumations, an act of justice and reparation of the truth’, she added.

For her part, Nieves Lady Barreto stressed the commitment of Minister Ángel Víctor Torres to increase the funds already earmarked for the Canary Islands to carry out the pending exhumations, and remarked that ‘everything that is part of Democratic Memory is to dignify an era in which some people ended their lives in a way that they should not have ended, and the Canary Islands Government will maintain its commitment to always dignify the victims’.

Catalogue of vestiges of Francoism
Ángel Víctor Torres recalled that there are two laws of Memory, the 2007 Law of Historical Memory and the 2022 Law of Democratic Memory, and there is also a law and a regulation in the Canary Islands, along with a catalogue of Francoist vestiges: ‘A catalogue that began with Santa Cruz de Tenerife, and there are already some in other capitals as well, but which was appealed and denounced for not publishing the annex, and now the possibility of its modification has been announced. The Spanish Government will support everything that can be improved and that everything is done with inter-administrative collaboration, but we do not want the removal of Francoist vestiges to be delayed. And if any administration does not remove the Francoist vestiges, the Spanish Government will do so’.