Pamplona (EFE) from 1936.
The event, held this year in the rain, was attended by the Minister for Citizen Relations, Ana Ollo, and the President of Parliament, Unai Hualde. Parliamentarians and councilors from various political groups have also attended.
Truth, justice and reparation for the victims
In this tribute, in which many of its participants carried Republican flags, the actor José Mari Asín read a statement. In it, he highlighted that “there are numerous milestones promoted so that history is no longer written by the victors and so that the horror is not forgotten.”
“It is the victims of that massacre, their families, who with tenacity, effort and courage are making it possible to compensate, in some way, the people retaliated against by the coup plotters”, he pointed out.
The homage took place next to the plaque that commemorates the murdered residents of Pamplona, a space declared by the regional government as a Place of Historical Memory of Navarra.
The objective, Asín added, “has been and is the search for truth, justice and reparation for the victims and their families, always with the desire not to repeat those events.” But “there is still a long way to go, since Justice has never been on our side and the perpetrators continue to go unnoticed”, he highlighted.
Special mention to the prisoners
The president of the association, Amaya Lerga, also took part in this act. She recalled that “in Navarra there was no war front but we were one of the communities with the highest rate of murders and repression. Until today, impunity for these crimes.”
Decades later, the president of Affna has indicated, “with the memorialist and social impulse we have managed to situate memory in the political framework and we believe that the work of memory has been normalized in an irreversible way.”
This year, he commented, they wanted to make a special mention of the prisoners, “to all of them, from those who lived in detention those first days after the coup, many thinking that nothing would happen to them, to the last of the Franco regime, who they did know after decades of persecution of the political left and the anti-Franco struggle”.
Testimony of the Esparza family
As a family testimony, this year Jaime Esparza has participated, who has recounted the repression that his family experienced, both from his father and mother, for the “crime” that several of its members were from the CNT and the UGT.
Among them were his uncles Luis and Victorio, his father’s brothers, who, as has been learned later, were murdered on the same July 18, 1936 in Berriozar.
A floral offering by the attendees and a tribute aurresku have closed the act.