Transition consensus, Constitution and partisan interpretations of the Law of Historical Memory

TERESA FREIXES

 The newspaper "La Razón" asked me to give my opinion about the Law of Historical Memory. As I say in the report, the reason why it does not help to harmony between people is due to the way it is applied and interpreted. It does not take into account the formation of the consensus that presided over the Transition and the elaboration of the Constitution of 1978, preceded by amnesties that made possible the integration of those who had suffered jail and exile in the constitutional system that we endowed ourselves at that time. In addition, with the ignorance that one has about History, the demagoguery that is made about this whole issue goes unchecked, especially among young people.

The jurist emphasizes that "although the Law of Historical Memory has debatable points, more than the law itself, I think that what does not help to the harmony between people is how it is interpreted and applied. It is used as a throwing weapon and not as an instrument of reconciliation".

Political risks, including the Catalan crisis or a probable general election this year, act as a brake on economic growth in the medium term. To this also contributes that the result of these elections would probably provide a similar scheme to the one in Andalusia, that is to say, very fragmented. This is not positive for economic progress, "say the economists. Neither does the "guerracivilismo" (partisan interpretation of war) that has settled in Spain with few sights to be diluted with the passage of time. To talk about it, we met the jurist Teresa Freixes who comes to analyze the eighth objective for next year. "All countries that have suffered a dictatorship, a war, have had to draw lessons from their own past. Recall what happened in Germany, in France or Italy, where the confrontation not only between countries, but the internal one, caused that new constitutions had to be written after the Second World War, based on common principles and values, the Rule of Law, democracy and human rights, inspired by those of the Hague Congress of 1948, the origin of the current democratic Europeanism, " she recalls.

Then concepts were formulated, such as constitutional patriotism, according to Freixes, to enhance the rights of citizenship as the foundation of the democratic system. «All this aimed at cohesive citizenship based on the aforementioned principles. I do not see that this is the interpretation and application that is made about the Law of Historical Memory. Moreover, historical memory has been spoken of as an image of the publicly constructed past, indicating that with this definition it is constructed, that is, it reinvents, publicly, that is, openly and notoriously, what actually happened. This is not historical memory. It is manipulation of History », says the lawyer. In addition, she adds that the European Union obliges to the internal authorities "not to revictimize, directly or secondarily, the victims, to respect their dignity and to take all the necessary measures for their compensation, not only material but also moral, in a context not only procedural but also extraprocesal ».

Freixes, who has suffered harassment in her native land, Catalonia, for defending constitutional principles before secessionist delusions, stresses that the United Nations also considers that the support and protection of victims must include their social and institutional recognition. "And when referring to the victims, a reference is made to all of them. That is why it is not possible to legislate unilaterally on the remote control to oversize the victims of one side over the victims of the other. Those who do not take into account their history, many times are forced to repeat it ».

For her, the problem is not in keeping in mind that our recent history has been marked by civil wars. Recall the nineteenth century, with the Carlist Wars, the twentieth century, with the War of 36. "And the ideological war, that of the two sides of Machado's poem, we wanted to end with the reconciliation and consensus of the Transition.

Some, who did not even live through those years, have their own conception of what happened, without taking into account the slightest historical rigor. They even affirm that it is necessary to establish the democratic memory through a process that requires a critical look. Memory is memory, without adjectives. And the criticism is made through scientifically established indicators. It can not be rebuilt by reinventing », she claims.

According to Freixes, memory is based on contrasted facts. And the interpretation on them also follows contrasted methods. "No truths established by an interested recreation that nobody benefits," she says. Of course, it does not help the citizens, but neither does it help the image of the country that, as a "brand", has also been damaged abroad not only by social disputes, but also by the madness in Catalonia or the controversial exhumation of Franco.

How do they analyze what is happening inside our borders from the outside?

https://www.larazon.es/espana/teresa-freixes-fin-del-guerracivilismo-BK21186997