Democratic memory is not a bargaining chip

The Constitutional Court has admitted for processing an appeal from the Spanish government and has overturned the decision of the Balearic Government to repeal the law of democratic memory of the Balearic Islands, which was done last March with the votes of the PP and Vox. The repeal came after many back-and-forth discussions on this matter (it was among the one hundred and ten points of President Prohens' investiture agreement, which Vox made the PP pay for without forgiving a single one, and with interest) and after some scandal such as the one staged by the president of the Balearic Parliament, from Vox, who during a session in which democratic memory was precisely being debated, furiously tore up a photo of the Roges del Molinar, murdered by the Francoists in 1937. For the moment, the repeal remains provisionally without effect pending the TC's ruling on its more than probable unconstitutionality. This is important news, to which the entity Memòria de Mallorca, which works for the recognition of the victims of fascism on the island (where, contrary to what some still believe or want to believe, there was a true massacre of people executed in cold blood), reacted immediately, demanding that Prohens' executive apply the democratic memory law: for three years of the legislature, before repealing it, it has kept it in suspense and has avoided convening the commission responsible for its development. The TC's decision may also point the judicial path for the democratic memory laws of the Valencian Country and Aragon, also repealed by the PP-Vox binomial, following their denialist policies of Francoism's crimes.Vox has reacted to the news with its usual rhetoric of the communist dictatorship that Spain suffers and all that. More worrying is the PP's reaction: as Anna Mascaró explains in Ara Balears, sources from the parliamentary group of the Peperos say that they are fine with the repeal being suspended, because (as they said, they emphasize) they only voted in favor to have Vox's support to approve the budgets. To say this with so much carelessness and cynicism is truly frightening. Memory laws are among the most delicate and sensitive that a government can manage. They are also a touchstone of a government's democratic quality. To bargain with them with indifference and cold blood indicates that we are facing rulers of more than dubious democratic credibility, and they are not even aware of it.There are things that are better understood by comparison: if the French or German right were to agree not only to govern with the far-right (that alone is already unthinkable, because they practice the cordon sanitaire policy, which is naturally essential), but also to repeal memory laws to approve budgets, the scandal would be indescribable. By the way, to the wise people on duty who oblige us by scolding Mallorcans and Valencians for having PP and Vox governments: keep your paternalism, keep your arrogance, and stop making a fool of yourselves, please.