The Spanish government will keep the police on Via Laietana despite "redefining" the police station

MadridThe Ministries of Justice and Interior amend the plain to the Minister of Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, and maintain that the police station on Via Laietana will maintain its police use. In an interview in The Newspaper On Tuesday, Torres said that the "purpose" of declaring the building a memorial site is to move the National Police to another location. However, in an appearance before the justice commission, Minister Félix Bolaños said that it is a "very important, centrally located, necessary police station for the organisation of public safety". "We did not come to an agreement when I was Minister for Democratic Memory, nor do I think we will easily come to an agreement in the near future," he said, responding to the deputy of the Left, Pilar Vallugera, who has again demanded the transfer of the building to the Barcelona City Council or the Generalitat.

"This is the purpose. In other words, it is not the same thing that a building be declared a memorial site and that this building can be dedicated to it. And that is what we will agree between the Spanish government and the Catalan institutions. I am convinced that we will reach an agreement," said Torres in the interview. Sources from the Ministry of the Interior, which has jurisdiction over the police station, explain to ARA that the building will be "resignified", as announced in the framework of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Franco's death. This is expected to take place in July. The gesture will result in the "installation of an explanatory plaque", according to the ministry led by Fernando Grande-Marlaska, "but it will continue to be a police station". "It has nothing to do with the use of the building, which will continue to be for police use", they make clear.

For years, memorial organisations and pro-sovereignty parties have been calling for the building to be converted into a police station. Via Layetana is a memorial site for torture and repression, and the PSC has been making changes on this issue. Even the PSOE in 2017 had voted in favor in Congress of a proposal by ERC to close the police station, although the socialists have been modulating their position. In 2021, with Salvador Illa at the head of the PSC, the current president of the Generalitat stated that it should continue to be used for police purposes. In the Barcelona City Council in April of last year, the PSC abstained from an initiative that advocated relocating the National Police, and a few months ago, in November, the Minister of Justice, Ramon Espadaler, wrote a letter to the Spanish government asking for the "resignification" and betting on a "modern, more functional and operational" headquarters, without getting it wet.

Parliament's endorsement of the memory law

This Thursday, the plenary session of the Parliament has given the green light to the processing of the draft law on democratic memory, which will require the removal of Francoist symbols within two years and will sanction the glorification of the dictatorship. This is a project that comes from the previous ERC government and which fell through due to the early elections.

There is no specific reference in the law to the Via Laietana police station, but it does set out the conditions that a space of democratic memory must meet. Among others, the owners – currently the Spanish government, although it had been requested that the title be transferred to the Generalitat or the Barcelona City Council – "have the obligation to preserve and maintain them, to ensure the safeguarding of their values, so that the characteristics that identify them are not lost and are not lost."