Lanzarote En Pie (LEP) issued a press release this Monday afternoon requesting all democratic political groups in the Arrecife City Council to demand strict compliance with the Canary Islands Historical Memory Law (2018) and the Democratic Memory Law (2022). The municipalist organization considers it "unacceptable" to move forward with the relocation of the Francoist symbol in Arrecife's Plaza de Las Palmas, "despite its removal being a legal obligation".
LEP recalls that "no agreement of the Local Government Board can oblige the relocation of a vestige whose removal is ordered by law," and warns that questioning this implies "either ignorance of the legal framework or a political justification for a decision that cannot be sustained." In this regard, it points to Article 47 of Law 39/2015, which declares administrative acts that violate higher-ranking laws null and void.
The organization emphasizes that the Catalog of Francoist Vestiges of the Canary Islands is an administrative tool, not a condition for applying the law. "The obligation to remove symbols that praise the coup, the civil war, or the dictatorship has existed since the Democratic Memory Law came into effect. With or without a catalog, the Administration is obliged to act," they state from LEP.
Furthermore, remember that there is a technical-legal report following the Governing Board's agreement that confirms the monument's Francoist nature and its exaltation of the dictatorship. "The discussion is not about a procedure, but about the political and historical meaning of the symbol. The law does not require it to be included in a catalog, only that it exalts anti-democratic values. And in this case, it does," explains the organization.
For LEP, maintaining or relocating Falangist symbols in public spaces "breaks the basic consensus of any democratic society" and turns a place of coexistence into a space marked by the memory of the coup and the dictatorship"Public spaces must represent values of coexistence, pluralism, and democratic respect. Arrecife cannot regress in memory rights or send ambiguous messages about what these symbols mean," state the municipalist party.
For this reason, Lanzarote En Pie makes a direct appeal to all the democratic parties that make up the Arrecife City Council Plenary, asking for "institutional responsibility". "What is at stake is not a formality, but compliance with the law and the model of coexistence we want for Arrecife," they state.
The LEP note concludes by reiterating that it will continue to defend a city "where all people can recognize themselves without symbolic impositions of the authoritarian past".
