Galicia and historical memory
On August 17, 1936, Alexandre Bóveda, according to Castelao the driving force and heart of nationalism, was assassinated in La Caeira after a sham trial that condemned him to death for "treason." On August 12, 1975, Franco's police murdered nationalist militant Moncho Reboiras in Ferrol, shooting him three times in the back. A few days earlier, the government declared the death sentence handed down to Humberto Baena, a man from Vigo, executed on September 27, 1975, "illegal and null." These are three dates, three people, among the thousands we could mention. In Galicia, where in 1936 there was no battle front, but rather a fierce war that gripped the country and its people with brutal repression, exile, hunger, misery and death, we were able to maintain an anti-Franco guerrilla movement—not a maquis movement—well into the 1960s (Jose Castro Veiga, considered the last guerrilla killed in combat, was assassinated on March 10, 1965).
This country, which some consider (want) to be submissive, docile, subordinate, and right-wing, was able to stop attacks such as the establishment of a nuclear power plant in Xove in 1979; to raise a Nunca Mais (Never Again) in 2002; to maintain its own language and culture for centuries, since the time of the "Taming and Castration" of those Castilian kings.
We are capable of recognizing ourselves in our victories as well as in our defeats. Our history is the history of a nation without a state, exactly like the Basque Country or Catalonia (even though Tarradellas never considered us on the same level), with strength, vigor, and courage to continue fighting for our dignity as a people, for our culture, our economy, our resources, our language. In short, for our freedom, for equality, peace, and the progress of our nation and all other nations. Left-wing nationalism, organized politically, socially, culturally, and through trade unions, exists in Galicia. It honors its martyrs and resists caciquismo, Spanish nationalism, the right, and even the far right, whose only institutional representative in Galicia was a VOX councilor in the Avión City Council (Ourense), who recently abandoned that party to join the non-affiliated group.
It's true that the struggle is unequal, that we must battle a right-wing that, while historically incorporating (and, in some ways, neutralizing) more extreme sensibilities, still managing to equip itself with a certain "Galicianist" veneer, has currently entered a drift of blind centralist servitude. A right-wing that has unquestioningly accepted intolerant, sectarian, or discriminatory policies that, I hope, will not be endorsed by a people proud of themselves, tolerant of differences, accustomed to emigration, and, consequently, respectful of other peoples.
This August 17th, Galicia Martyr's Day, we will once again pay tribute to all those who passed away, whose memory we will always remember because they constitute the foundation of what we are today. Let us speak, yes, of Catalonia and the Basque Country, of September 17th and Aberri Eguna, but let us not make the all-too-common mistake of forgetting Galicia and its days of remembrance in this recounting.