The list of political groups that will sit at the Congress at the King’s House to commemorate 50 years of the monarchy is growing. The gesture announced on Tuesday by Sumar’s two representatives in the Council of Congress – vice president Esther Gil de Reboleño and first secretary Gerardo Pisarello – are joined by the group’s deputy spokesperson Alberto Ibáñez, Compromís, Esquerra Republicana and EH Bildu, who also confirmed to EL PAÍS that they will not participate in the event to be held on November 21 in the Chamber of Deputies.
In the interview, the Crown in the transition to democracy which will take place in the Constitutional Chamber, what the Crown represented in the political transition process will be discussed in a more academic tone. In a press conference this Tuesday in the Chamber, Pisarello himself announced that he will refuse to attend with “deep conviction” because 50 years after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco “it is unacceptable that the Crown has not publicly expressed its disengagement from the Franco regime, which was the one that returned it to the leadership of the State”.
In a statement released by the House of Commons, Pisarello’s party, the secretary also states: “Fifty years after the dictatorship, we still do not know the whole truth about 23-F; there is no sensational and unequivocal condemnation of the Franco regime; and the king emeritus is tolerated to claim his personal closeness to a dictator responsible for repression, exile and thousands of victims”. “We cannot support a biased and complacent account of our recent history that hides essential issues and normalizes the praise of a tyrant. Democracy was not a gift from above: it was the achievement of millions of people,” he says.
In Sumar the debate on the group’s presence has not yet taken place formally, although coalition sources tend to be absent. The event will be moderated by journalists Fernando Ónega and Iñaki Gabilondo and will see the participation of Miquel Roca and Miguel Herrero, fathers of the Constitution, as well as the academic Adela Cortina, and the president of the Center for Political and Constitutional Studies, Rosario García Mahamut.
The commemoration is part of the two events that the House of the King has organized on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the monarchy in Spain, which will fall on November 22 and which coincides with the publication in France of the memoirs of Juan Carlos I. In one of the most controversial passages he describes his relationship with Franco. The king emeritus speaks of his good relations with the dictator and writes that, when Franco was dying, he was “convinced” that not even his “worst enemies” wished him a similar end. which will be celebrated on November 21st through two events organized by the Congress of Deputies and the House of the King.
Juan Carlos I was not invited to either event. The reason, according to sources at the Zarzuela Palace, is that he does not participate in the official public activities of the Royal Family after his abdication on June 2, 2014 and the decision to transfer his residence to Abu Dhabi.
