Salamanca Papers: the Dignity Commission demands that Illa unblock the 35,000 missing documents

BarcelonaWhen it's 21 years since the law on the return of the Salamanca documents and four of the democratic memory law, the process of restitution of documentary heritage plundered by Francoism continues to be stalled. According to the Dignity Commission, around 35,000 documents still remain to be returned to Catalonia, a figure representing approximately 5% of the total fund. Faced with this situation, the entity has urged the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, to convene the joint State-Generalitat commission to unblock the transfers with the Ministry of Culture.

The president of the association, Josep Cruanyes, regrets the lack of response from the ministry led by Ernest Urtasun, and recalls that Catalan administrations are legally recognized as victims of repression. "Why are so many laws made if they are not then complied with?", asks Cruanyes, who believes that without effective reparation, the norms risk becoming mere propaganda. If the paralysis persists, the entity plans to transfer the case to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Truth, Justice and Reparation.

One of the main points of friction is the documentation of Public Order and justice from the Civil War era, as well as the funds belonging to 47 Catalan town councils, Freemasonry, and the Jewish community. According to the Commission, the Ministry of Culture now argues that public order funds after the May Events of 1937 correspond to the State, as it was then that the state government assumed the direction of the police.

A "trophy"

Cruanyes recalls, however, that in the 2006 litigation over the first batches of documents retained in Salamanca, the same ministry issued a ruling specifying that the State had only assumed police direction on a "provisional" basis and that the competence remained with the Generalitat, a criterion that was upheld by a ruling of the Audiencia Nacional in 2008. For Cruanyes, maintaining the retention of these papers is equivalent to perpetuating the logic of military "war booty." "Mr. Urtasun, if Franco had not won, all these documents would be in Catalan archives and the competence of the police and justice would have returned to the Generalitat," says Cruanyes, who also criticizes the Catalan president, Salvador Illa: "For the first time for a president, the recovery of funds plundered by Francoism has not been a priority."

Likewise, the collective alerts about the situation of part of the Generalitat's fund kept in the Military Archive of Ávila. According to the investigations of the historian Jordi Oliva, the documentation, originally cataloged as part of the "Archive of documentation of the war of liberation, red zone. Index of the Generalitat de Catalunya" , has become "Public Archives Institutions of territorial administration. Government of Euskadi. Generalitat de Cataluña". "It is a way of hiding their origin and preventing their return," assures Cruanyes.