The announcement by the Spanish government that the Via Laietana police station in Barcelona, a location of Franco-era torture, is to be declared a remembrance space in application of Spain's law of Democratic Memory, but that this is to be carried out without a change of use or ownership and, therefore, without the departure of the Spanish National Police from the building, has been flatly rejected by the Dignity Commission, the remembrance organization which, with other platforms, is leading the call for the transfer of the building to the Catalan government and its conversion into a centre of interpretation of torture, since it sees the designation of the remembrance space as "incompatible" with the police presence.
"The National Police should be feeling very uncomfortable to be in a building with this connotation, where there was torture and political persecution well beyond 1978", said Pep Cruanyes, member of the Dignity Commission, who in statements to ElNacional.cat asserted that the announcement to maintain the Spanish police presence there is comparable to "creating a museum in a former concentration camp but maintaining it as a prison" and that is why he reiterated that the demands of the commission continue with as much validity as ever. "We continue to ask for the property to be transferred to the Generalitat of Catalonia and that the Catalan institutions transform it into a remembrance centre beyond the "electoralist" announcement of this Wednesday - a reference to the proximity of the Catalan election on May12th.
In fact, Cruanyes regretted that from the Spanish ministry "they have always taken offence, asserting that the National Police are democratic", and he rejected that "that the Spanish police could remain there after it becomes a remembrance centre". The activist recalled that at the time provision was already made for the Spanish police to expand the site they occupy in the La Verneda district and "it was agreed that the police would leave Via Laietana", an action that has not yet occurred. "It shows that for the Spanish government, remembrance is a purely electoral and propaganda issue".
In addition, Cruanyes stated that the Spanish government "have let it be understood that they will be the ones who decide what is done with it, and we don't want that, because that way, an officialist narrative of the remembrance will be made". From the Dignity Commission, they are advocating that the building be transferred to the Generalitat and that memorial organizations manage it. "We maintain our demands, which cannot be achieved with this declaration by the Spanish government", responded Cruanyes, who also criticized the use of the figures of Lluís Companys and Salvador Puig Antich in the Socialist announcements over the future plans for the building: "Let them not play with remembrance anymore, what they have to do is for the head of state and the minister of defence to apologise", he insisted.