Around 80 people, many minors and the majority between 25 and 30 years old, gathered this Friday near the church of Santa María la Real in Seville due to the impossibility of accessing its interior, where the Falange of Seville had called a mass at 7pm. in honor of their fallen. The Dominicans closed the doors of the temple and those present celebrated their particular alternative homage in the street, with insults to the church, Francoist slogans and Facing the sun with the raised arm Phalangist salute as the finishing touch. All the time they were monitored by four National Police vans distributed on both sides of the road.
“Spain, great and free”; “Arriba España”, “Presente”, with the arm raised and every time the name of the deceased of the Falange was read during the Civil War, were some of the shouts that were heard, mixed with his interpretation of the events of the Second Republic, the events of the Civil War and the links with current political leaders and the politics of memory, including the exhumations of graves – “desecration of graves”, according to the conveners.
“Warlike speeches, allusions to the Republic, Cara al Sol, they uttered unequivocally Francoist slogans that constitute an apologia for Francoism,” said Pepe Barragán, member of the Andalusian Federation of Democratic Memory (FAMD), present at the demonstration documenting the event. This entity, which corrected the eldest grandson of the commemorative associations of Andalusia, such as the political party Adelante Andalucía, will present separate letters to the Government Delegation, the Prosecutor’s Office for Democratic Memory and Human Rights and the Junta de Andalucía to suspend the mass for violation of the national and Andalusian laws on memory.
“They start in 1936 and end in 2025 saying the same thing, changing the names of the policies and the people they hate,” explains Barragán regarding the attacks and threats launched against the Andalusian team. “Come on Andalusia and other idiots and animals of the deputies, of the beach bars of the journalists, of the congresses and of the regional and national parliaments. The Falange is on the street!”, one of the two officials who had taken the megaphone was heard to say.
Sources from the National Police confirm that no accident occurred, but do not specify whether the Francoist slogans launched by those present were written as a preventive tool. Of course, a neighbor threw a bucket of water at them the first moment they shouted “Up!” None of the participants wore clothes or flags with pre-constitutional symbols, which are banned, and carried only the flag of the Falange, a legal political group in Spain.
For the FAMD, the police report and the images taken of the concentration could serve as evidence if they could be included in the document sent to the Prosecutor’s Office in which they also warned about the acts before and after the mass, in case they occurred.
The participants who were near the church, in San Vicente street, in the heart of Seville, for just under an hour, placed a bouquet of flowers in front of the door of the temple. “Your help was made by the Phalanx to commemorate and pray for their fallen, which unfortunately was not possible due to the refusal of this church which refuses to offer essences for Christian worship,” said one of the participants. This newspaper was unable to confirm whether it was the Dominicans who decided not to authorize the act or whether the suspension was imposed by the Government Delegation or the Prosecutor’s Office.
