The publication in the Official State Gazette of the declaration of Via Laietana, 43 as a Place of Democratic Memory represents a significant event. For the first time, the State officially recognizes that this building was one of the main centers of political repression of Francoism in Catalonia. It is a step that victims and the memorialist movement have been demanding for decades.
This recognition, however, comes incomplete. The same resolution that describes the torture, political persecution, and suffering of thousands of people decides to keep the police use of the building intact. This is where the great contradiction arises: the past is recognized, but the place where this past occurred is not transformed.
More than three years ago, the Ateneu Memòria Popular formally launched the petition for Via Laietana, 43 to be declared a space of memory. That initiative was followed by letters of impetus, allegations, academic reports, and sustained mobilization by the Platform Via Laietana 43. Let's Do Justice. Let's Do Memory. The result of this collective work is also the official recognition published today.
But the demand has never been limited to obtaining an administrative declaration. It has always been much more ambitious: to fully transform the building into a genuine public space of memory, dedicated to explaining Francoist repression, preserving testimonies, promoting research, dignifying victims, and educating new generations in democratic values.
A memorial is not a plaque. A memorial is not an interpretive panel. A memorial is a space re-signified, freed from the uses that represent the institutional continuity of the repressive past. Great democracies have turned former spaces of terror into places of memory open to citizens. This is the international reference we should follow.
During these years, the Congress of Deputies, the Parliament of Catalonia, and the Barcelona City Council have approved resolutions favorable to this transformation. Many parties have repeatedly expressed their support. But when the decisive moment arrived, the response has been a minimal solution.
The problem is not legal. The democratic memory law itself allows for the development of much more ambitious policies. What is lacking is political will. The courage to assume that reparation also requires profound symbolic and institutional decisions is missing.
This year, as fifty years of the dictator's death are commemorated, the Spanish government had an exceptional opportunity to demonstrate that democratic memory is a state policy. It could have announced the progressive transfer of the prefecture and initiated the creation of a large European center dedicated to the interpretation of Francoist repression. It has not done so.
Political parties must also engage in self-criticism. It is not enough to approve motions and solemn declarations if the necessary pressure is not then exerted for governments to fulfill their commitments. Democratic memory requires consensus, but also determination.
Victims do not claim privileges. They claim coherence. They claim that the place where they were tortured should definitively cease to have the same institutional function that symbolized repression. They claim a dignified, living, participatory, and educational space.
Therefore, the resolution published on Friday is both a step forward and a missed opportunity. It is progress because it officially recognizes facts that for too long were silenced. But it is insufficient because it renounces the full completion of the reparation process.
Catalan society will continue to demand an authentic space for memory at Via Laietana, 43. Not for revenge, but for democracy. Not against anyone, but in favor of victims, truth, and guarantees of non-repetition.
Memory is not an exercise in nostalgia. It is a public policy oriented towards the future. Societies that honestly explain their past are those that best protect the rights and freedoms of the present.
We still have time. The declaration published on Friday should not be the final point, but the beginning of a new era. An era that demands political courage, institutional commitment, and dialogue with memory organizations to transform Via Laietana, 43 into what it should have always been: a space entirely dedicated to memory, justice, truth, and reparation.
