The next day

"The war for memory
It's slow, long, and I don't know if it has an ending.
Xavier Montanyà

The next day, Franco was gone—but Francoism remained, motionless and with its hands still dripping with blood from that September 27, 1975. The crucial issue, and that's why they killed until the very last second, was that we were still here—this us majestic figures they could never kill, and the scars we still bear, including so many thousands of anonymous names, six thousand mass graves, a country in the gutter, 66,500 Catalans with open military court proceedings, or "the end of so many since that July," as Brossa would say. Five decades have passed, and there are those who continue to perversely confuse the ability to close wounds with the ability to reopen them, and those who, episcopalianly, confuse turning the page with leaving the book blank—not only unable to read it carefully and respectfully, but even unable to write and understand it. There is also an unbridled Bourbon monarchy reclaiming the dictator in the guise of a supposed best-sellerThat's still the case.Spaniards, Franco is dead", announced Arias Navarro, the butcher of Malaga, 50 years ago. And, in proper Catalan, the most faithful and appropriate clandestine translation would be "what more could we want?"

Fifty years later, what remains is essentially an organic, comprehensive, and enduring impunity. From eavesdropping on adult conversations at home, one learns that the emperor has no clothes—and his hands and feet are bound—that history is filled with death, imprisonment, and exile, and that the freedom now proclaimed to the wind was, in reality, a grand celebration for executioners, perpetrators, and the imprisoned. And, as the master Josep Fontana always insisted, it also extended to the systemic corruption and systematic enrichment, also unpunished, of 40 years of plunder, accumulation, and overexploitation that still explain a good part of the present-day economic structure. Long ago, when public policies of remembrance were still a distant prospect—and we had already enjoyed 25 years of democracy—I found in the lucidity of Santiago Alba Rico an extremely instructive summary of the long surgical and orthopedic operation that was the fascist military dictatorship under the shadow of Francoism. In short, what he was saying was that they only let us vote again, 40 years later, when they had every guarantee and no doubt that we would "vote correctly" again. Otherwise, what would be the point? Earlier, prophetically and presciently, Gregorio Morán had written in 1991 The price of transitionwhere he recalled that the most amazing thing of all would be telling children a fairy tale. And we were still incredibly lucky that the good Ignasi Riera wrote to us Franco's Catalans.

But if, amidst books, doubts, and supreme courts, I had to choose a pen of memory the day after—which is today—I would choose Xavier Montanyà. He has just published Against silence and impunity (Vilaweb, 2025) and is preceded by invaluable work, at least since 1984 when he revived the Puig Antich case, in the recovery of memory and in denouncing the silences that still condition us today. Of everything he says, two things stand out. A categorical, implacable, and irrefutable statement: that in 1978 he legalized the reasons for the July 1936 uprising, that is, that the privileges obtained in 1939 were ratified. Being a journalist through and through, he cites the source: the former chaplain Ta. Montanyà, a persistent winemaker, shared the statement with him, adding further: that in 2025 perhaps we must move beyond the dichotomy of forgetting and remembering and address the issue, against the assault on reason, between knowledge and ignorance. Denialism is something else entirely—it doesn't ignore, it denies.

The following day—and the chosen date of November 20th seems anything but coincidental—also brings with it the condemnation, in the Kingdom of Perpetual Leaks, of an attorney general in the case of a wealthy Madrid gentleman who, faced with the choice between suicide and fleeing Spain, could have simply chosen to pay his taxes, like any other citizen. Also etched in our minds is the statement of that UCO commander—whose surname is Balas—who, without batting an eye, declared in court that "the UCO does not conduct speculative investigations." And the solemnity of the courtroom was crushed by a collective burst of laughter, as natural as it was coherent and irrepressible. Irreverent, icy laughter, of course, born of the handouts. They're running rampant again, and the machine devours even its inventor—it starts with the smallest dissident in the playground and ends with the school principal being arrested.

The following day also marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi camps where so many Catalan and Spanish Republicans perished. Today, the Amical de Mauthausen will receive the 2025 Guillem Agulló Prize in the Parliament of Catalonia, after the Valencian Parliament annulled the award last year. And if the struggle continues, under better or worse conditions, the day after tomorrow at noon we will gather again in front of the police station at Via Laietana 43 to demand—even if only temporarily—that it be converted into a center for memory and human rights. This was first demanded by social, civil, and memorial movements, and approved by the Barcelona City Council, the Parliament of Catalonia, and the Spanish Parliament—that is to say, neither the popular will, nor parliamentary democracy, nor political sovereignty is being respected. But picking up the lost thread of Xavier Montanyà's forgotten figures, perhaps we should talk much less about Franco and much more about the heroes and heroines who resisted him from April 1, 1939, when the long struggle for the restoration of democracy began. And this includes ensuring that Tomasa Cuevas and Miguel Núñez, Neus Català and Joaquim Amat Piniella, Quico Sabaté and Joan Comorera are freely recognized in schools and everywhere else. A thousand countless names against Franco.

Because when the never-ending story of the Iberian Peninsula comes to an end, Espartero still remains—the same man who suggested bombing Barcelona every 50 years, as a precaution. Today, things are different, now that so much is on the rise. quote The suspension of autonomy, the proscription of Catalan, the war on poor migrants, the testosterone-fueled backlash against all forms of feminism, and the Catalan far right—an utter disgrace—that is now emerging. Both sides know it better than we do: that the moment we have a breath of fresh air and fear isn't looming, we're always seized by that age-old urge to speak Catalan, to think more clearly, and to vote the wrong way again. Driven by the irrepressible desire for freedom, 50 years later, to live a better life, free among equals.