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Madrid: Madrid city council faced calls Friday on the 40th anniversary of the death of General Francisco Franco to move faster to rename all streets and squares in the Spanish capital which pay tribute to the former dictator and his brutal regime.
Madrid's newly elected left-wing government announced in July that it would enforce a nationwide law, passed by Spain's Socialist government in 2007 but resisted by previous conservative city administrations.
It called for eradication of place names that commemorate the Franco regime and its heroes, martyrs, members of Franco's Falange Party and other prominent adherents.
The Socialist group in the Madrid city government on Friday urged the town hall to move from "words to acts" and "clean the streets of Francoist reminiscences".
"It is essential for democratic normality that the city cease to pay tribute to these types of people," Socialist spokeswoman Purificacion Causapie added in a letter sent to the city government.
Many streets have already been renamed under a 2007 "historical memory" law that calls for the gradual replacement of symbols relating to Franco's 1939-75 rule.
But historian Antonio Ortiz, who has spent the past decade compiling a list of Madrid place names associated with Franco, says there are over 170 streets and squares in the Spanish capital which still carry the names of dictatorship officials.
Among the place names are the street of the Fallen of the Blue Division, a unit that served with the Nazis during World War II, and Arriba Espana square, which refers to Spain's old fascist Falange party.
Several vestiges of Franco's dictatorship also remain on historic buildings in Madrid, including a victory arch at one of the entrances to the city, several defence buildings and the El Pardo and Santa Cruz palaces.
Manuela Carmena, a 71-year-old retired judge who was an anti-Franco lawyer in the later years of the dictatorship, was elected Madrid mayor in May, ousting the conservative Popular Party which governs at the national level.
AFP
