Girona wants to celebrate 50 years without Franco by removing all vestiges of his regime

The city council is urging property owner associations to take away fascist plaques from facades

Next year will mark the 50^th anniversary of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco and the return of democracy to the Iberian country. To celebrate the momentous occasion, the Catalan town of Girona has decided to completely get rid of any symbols left in the urban space that remind people of that time.

Earlier this year, the city council established that there were still numerous plaques, symbols and tombstones, which dated back to the Francoist regime and dotted the urban landscape, mainly on building facades.

For this reason, in May, the authorities sent out 128 letters to private apartment buildings demanding the removal and reminding residents that the symbols go against democratic memory laws.

Indeed, Spain does have such a law. Promulgated in 2022, it provides that when symbols contrary to democratic memory are located in private or religious buildings facing a public space, the persons or institutions that own them must remove them or eliminate them.

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The next step for the Girona authorities will be to check in the autumn whether the owner associations have complied with the request to remove the plaques.

Most of these plaques contain the Falange symbol (five arrows in a bunch) of the Francoist regime.

"In the fall we will do a review and, from there, we will start the process of removing them ourselves wherever it has not been done," said Girona mayor Lluc Salellas, quoted by the Catalan News.

In addition, the city authorities will also get to work on removing tombstones that glorify Francoism in the local old cemetery.

Five tombstones and a cross with inscriptions praising the regime, mostly dated from 1939, will be removed.

The city council has indicated that the spaces of the removed plaques will not remain empty. New plaques will be placed commemorating the atrocities and victims of the Spanish Civil War, which led Franco to power.