Former Prime Minister José María Aznar has branded the new Historical Memory Law as “nonsense”, the opinion of which went ahead yesterday in the Constitutional Commission of Congress -thanks to the support of EH Bildu, PNV and PDeCAT together with PSOE and United We Can-, among other things because it is a project “made and agreed with terrorists”.
Aznar participated this Tuesday in a meeting at the Santander Menéndez Pelayo International University (UIMP) in which he addressed the Government to convey that “there cannot be two loyalties”. “Either you are loyal to the Constitution, or you are loyal to Bildu, but you cannot be loyal to the Constitution and to Bildu”. An affirmation that has obtained the applause of the public, among which were a good part of the popular leaders of Cantabria.
In the opinion of the former president, “it cannot be” that at the same time the Constitution be defended and a Democratic Memory project be approved, which is “nonsense.”
For example, he has referred to the point of the law that marks that victims of human rights violations will be recognized until 1983, which includes the first year of the Government of Felipe González – who became President in October 1982 – , who precisely preceded Aznar this morning at the UIMP in this Dialogue meeting with the former presidents and said that the Executive’s agreement with Bildu for the new law “sounds good” to him. “I haven’t seen this bill, when I see it I’ll tell you, but blowing my nose doesn’t sound good to me,” were his words.
“When a government like the current one agrees with the group that represents terrorism, that crimes be investigated until December 1983, five years after the Constitution was approved, at a time when the predecessors of the current government itself were already in government, I sincerely believe that this means having a very messy house”, Aznar has sentenced.
And it is that in his speech he reviewed the international political situation and the role of Spain in that context, in which he believes that, to be a great power, the country first has to have “the house politically in order”, for which “respect for the Constitution” is required.
Thus, he has indicated that Spain is currently “not in the best possible order” due to problems such as separatism, around which he has opined that the nation is “politically weak”, but “it is not socially broken”. “When a country has conspired daily for hundreds of years to put an end to its unity and cohesion and it is not possible to put an end to it”, it is because “what unites Spain is much stronger than what is trying to put an end to it “, he extolled.
Along the same lines, he pointed out that Spain is “a great power from the cultural point of view” and a “very attractive” country to attract talent for its quality of life. However, he has lamented that more than 80 million people in the US speak Spanish, and while “here we have problems for children to learn to speak it”, for what he considers that “sometimes we unnecessarily harm ourselves”.
“Spain has many possibilities, many opportunities,” said Aznar, who believes that what should be done is to put those future challenges on the table and “face them” instead of “looking back and trying to hit us again as if the keys to what we have to solve could come from there”.
The general coordinator of EH Bildu, Arnaldo Otegi, has referred on Twitter to the statements made by Felipe González about the new Law of Historical Memory, a regulation that, due to nationalist demands, intends to investigate the violations of human rights committed since the approval of the Constitution in 1978 until December 31, 1983, when the Socialist was already President of the Government.
“The Democratic Memory Law does not sound good to Felipe González for X reasons,” Otegi posted on Twitter, alluding to the person who ordered the crimes of the GAL.
In tune with this argument, yesterday Bildu’s spokesperson in Congress, Mertxe Aizpurua, assured that “a path has been opened to put the story of the Transition in check”.
The ERC spokesman in Congress, Gabriel Rufián, has also mocked in a tweet from the former socialist president on account of his words about the bill: “Felipe González says that the agreement that extends the Memory Law does not sound good to him until December 31, 1983. ‘Call it X,’ he said.”
The deputy spokesman for Citizens in the Congress of Deputies, Edmundo Bal, lamented today that the PSOE “ruined its image” by agreeing with EH Bildu on the Democratic Memory Law. He lamented that the law will go ahead thanks to the pact with “ETA’s heirs”, who are “Batasuna, Sortu and Bildu”. Therefore, he stressed that it is a “sad day” for those who believe in democracy, that memory “has no adjectives” and that “the dead are not from one side or the other.”
In turn, he criticized that this Law “does not make a single reference” to the terrorist group ETA, so it seems that “it has not existed” in Spain. Likewise, he assured that he can think of nothing “more immoral” and “disgusting” than this pact, which is “typical of the old policy” and with which the PSOE “has put an end to the legacy of the PSOE itself.”
“It disgusts me that Bildu questions the transition with the complicity of the PSOE”, he blurted out, while deploring that the Socialists, who during the transition were able to agree with different formations in order to “build a better Spain”, are now betting on a “Spain worse”. In addition, he criticized that the general coordinator of EH Bildu, Arnaldo Otegi, is “providing champagne” for this agreement.
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