We arrive at the fiftieth anniversary of the death of dictator Francisco Franco with two conflicting narratives. Memory is a perpetually relevant issue. We are memory. The only thing that truly shapes us is our memories: paradoxically, they are the least volatile of what we possess. Material and physical goods expire, but memory remains. If this is true for individuals, it is even more so collectively.

Last October, Vox tried to sabotage the Catalan Parliament's tribute to President Lluís Companys. 85th anniversary of his execution by the Franco regimeHe proceeded to hang highly visible posters around the chamber, labeling the executed president a "murderer" and accusing him of being responsible for the deaths of 8,352 Catalans. These actions led the Parliament's governing body to refer the members to the committee on the status of deputies to assess whether there had been a violation of the code of conduct. However, this newspaper has consulted several experts who believe it is possible to go further: to apply the Historical Memory Law and sanction Vox. The far-right's accusation is false: Companys led an operation to save tens of thousands of lives, including religious figures and right-wing citizens. The deaths of the eight thousand conservative Catalans, therefore, occurred despite Companys's immense humanitarian efforts. They were victims of the Red Terror, a period of uncontrolled violence following the failed 1936 coup in Catalonia between the violent radicalism of the CNT-FAI and the POUM, which Companys attempted to avert with mass evacuations. Arnau González Vilalta, the historian and author ofHumanitarianism, consulates, and dirty business (Editorial Base, 2020), states, in response to ARA's inquiry, that Vox's accusation "is manifestly unfair." He comments that "as the highest authority in the country, which was then practically independent, he was responsible for maintaining public order, but he did not control the streets." While emphasizing that he was "incapable" of safeguarding peaceful coexistence, he notes that he was "directly responsible for saving" lives. "He tried to save the lives of everyone he could; the Generalitat allows thousands of people to leave," he asserts.

Outrage in the Catalan Parliament over a new attack by Vox on the memory of the former president of the Generalitat Lluís CompanysThe far-right party has a poster calling the Republican a "murderer" hanging in a window of its office in the House of Representatives, but this Wednesday it took advantage of the floral offering before the sculpture commemorating his execution to enlarge it. On the occasion of the event in the courtyard of the Parliamentary Library, Vox placed even more posters, visible from the offering area, leaving one in the same place where a wreath had been laid in memory of the former president.

It didn't take long for the French to investigate who had collaborated with the Nazis. In December 1944, four months after the liberation of Paris and as World War II continued on various fronts, the new democratic authorities of the Provisional Government of the French Republic, headed by General Charles de Gaulle, sought to determine responsibility for the persecution of the exiled Republican officials in 1939. One of the arrests they investigated was that of the president of the Generalitat, Lluís Companys.

This morning marked the 85th anniversary of the execution of President Lluís Companys by the Spanish government. The President of the Generalitat (Catalan government), Salvador Illa, laid a wreath at the foot of Companys's grave in the Fossar de la Pedrera in the Montjuïc Cemetery in Barcelona.

Without respite. The execution by Franco's troops, 85 years ago today, of the former president of the Generalitat, Lluís Companys, has done nothing to ease the differences between Junts and ERC. Faced with the rise of the Catalan Alliance, for which all polls predict strong growth, and after some Junts mayors have called on the leadership to take a tougher line on immigration, the secretary general of the Republicans, Elisenda Alamany issued a warning to Carles Puigdemont's party during this morning's torchlit march: "We can either provide cover for the reactionary gamble of what Catalonia has never been, or we can return the country to a determined nation."

Barça has already said goodbye to playing at Montjuïc, where it has been its home for two seasons.

The Court of Auditors has become the indirect protagonist of the traditional floral offering in the cemetery of Montjuïc to pay homage to Lluís Companys, shot by Franco's regime on October 15, 1940. The Catalan Government, Parliament and several parties attended the Fossar de la Pedrera and they have all been critical of the case against Catalan government officials. It is a reminder that, 81 years later, repression does not stop. The reading from all sides has been that, despite the fact that there are no longer any executions, the Catalan institutions are still being persecuted. Some have even said that now no one is being killed but the "civil death" of some political leaders is being sought.

Laura Borràs is already the sixteenth Speaker of the Catalan Parliament after being voted in this Friday in the constitutive session of the legislature. It has not taken many minutes to show that she intends to exercise a militant speakership: her first speech has been full of references to freedom of expression, prisoners, exiles and self-determination. Borràs has just turned 50, she has been in front-line politics for only three years and intends to continue being a mainstay in the coming years. A profile that now seems usual but it is radically opposite to the one that had been chosen in most elections in the chamber. The speakership has gone from being an honorary prize to a political platform of the first magnitude.