Congress approves a law against Francoist associations that does not outlaw the Francisco Franco Foundation.

BarcelonaOutlawing associations that glorify Francoism has never been easy. Today marks another step toward achieving this goal, but it hasn't ended with one of the dictatorship's most active and staunch defenders: the Francisco Franco Foundation. With the favorable votes of all political parties, except for Vox, which voted against, and the abstentions of the Popular Party and the Navarrese People's Union (UPN), which abstained, the Congress of Deputies approved the new law on associations this Thursday.

With this law, which still has to pass through the Senate, associations whose activities include apologies for Francoism or praise both the 1936 coup d'état and the dictatorship can be dissolved. Associations that glorify the leaders of the coup d'état and the dictatorship, as well as those that humiliate the dignity of the victims or incite hatred and violence, can also be dissolved. The law provides judges with the tools to dissolve associations, but it can also be done through the public prosecutor's office, which could dissolve them through criminal proceedings when these associations incite hatred and violence.

One of the law's objectives is to prevent the creation of new associations. However, the Francisco Franco Foundation has a different path because, as a foundation, it reports to the Ministry of Culture. In fact, Last June, Minister Ernest Urtasun He already announced that one of his objectives was to enforce the law of democratic memory and close the foundation. According to the Ministry of Culture, the process will have three phases. The first will be to request information and documentation from the State Secretariat for Memory and the Registry of Foundations. The second will be the opening of the procedure, which would begin with the communication of the file to the memory of the Francisco Franco Foundation. A period of allegations would then begin, and a report would be requested from the State Attorney General's Office, based on which the Ministry of Culture would prepare a resolution to judicially urge the entity's dissolution. Finally, there would be a judicial process, and the judges would have the final say. If Urtasun achieves its objective, the Francisco Franco Foundation could attempt to be reborn as an association. One of the objectives of the new law approved this Thursday in Congress, therefore, would be to prevent this.