Memorial organizations do not want Via Laietana to be both a police station and a memorial site.

BarcelonaMemorial and human rights organizations that have been fighting for years to have the current Via Laietana police station become a memorial site for resistance and repression are outraged by the proposal made last week by the Minister of Justice, Ramon Espadaler. The police station was the headquarters of the Political-Social Brigade, a police branch charged with investigating and prosecuting opponents of the Franco regime, which had carte blanche to do whatever it wanted with its detainees. At the press conference in which Espadaler explained the events that should commemorate the 50th anniversary of Franco's death, he was joined by the Spanish government, the Catalan government, and Barcelona City Council. "There is no doubt that it should be recognized as a memorial site, but that is not necessarily incompatible with its current use," he said. The Spanish government already announced last year that Via Laietana would be a memorial site, but that the police would not leave.

The organizations want the police to leave and consider the two uses incompatible. They describe Espadaler's "minimal" proposal as "unacceptable": "There is a will to water down the case and comply with the case," they denounce. "It is more necessary than ever, and we must end the excuses, so that Via Laietana 43 finally and without further delay becomes a memorial center," demand the member organizations of the platform, who believe it is a matter of real political will, since the agreement was made years ago.

The organizations recall that in October 2024, the Parliament again declared that this space should be a memorial center and that Congress also voted for it in 2017. Therefore, they have demanded from the Government, and from Espadaler in particular, a "real commitment to transformation and memory" of the space, as has been done throughout the world. "We will not be accepted in the face of unserious and unacceptable proposals like this, so we will continue to demand that Via Laietana 43 be fully transformed into a center of memory and dignity," they stated in a statement. The campaign's promoters include Irídia, Òmnium Cultural, Amical de Mauthausen y Otros Campos y de Todas las Víctimas del Nazismo, the Catalan Association of Former Political Prisoners of the Franco Regime, the Catalan Roundtable of Memorialist Entities, and the Dignity Commission.