In an article titled “Close this building, President”, published on Monday in El País, Professor Rafael Argullol asked Pedro Sánchez to close the building of the Superior Headquarters of the National Police, on Via Laietana in Barcelona. Argullol, who was detained and interrogated there, recalls that it was a place of torture during the Franco dictatorship and suggests that it should end up being a library or a memorial.
Of the considerations he makes, one must be highlighted: the condescension with which Spanish justice treats victims, as if denying that it was “a real torture by real torturers under a real dictatorship”.
Argullol is spot on: if after 50 years since the dictator's death, the only reparation society can expect is a plaque on the sidewalk far enough from the entrance not to be bothersome, it means that the democratic state does not dare to tell the current police force that they must leave because that building is stained by horrible crimes. That transition to democracy, piloted by Francoists, with Juan Carlos de Borbón at the helm, has brought us here.
But there is more. Removing Franco from the Valley of the Fallen was easier: the helicopter that took away the corpse was broadcast on media worldwide, it positioned Sánchez as a coherent progressive president, and it forced the PP to take a stance. But, in Via Laietana, where are the coherence and the political gain? In Spanishness, obviously. Not even the most progressive government in history feels obliged to turn Via Laietana into a memorial, because the state, even if democratic, is Spanish, and would see the closure of the Headquarters as a lowering of the flag in the heart of the capital of Catalonia.
