SPAIN: Spanish government sets out new law to compensate victims of country's civil war in the 1930s
- 00:00:17
- ITN Source
SPAIN: Spanish government sets out new law to compensate victims of country's civil war in the 1930s
Spain's Socialist government on Friday (July 28) said it wanted to compensate victims of the civil war in the 1930s, but the opposition accused it of reopening old wounds while relatives of the dead said it did not go far enough. "The government wants to recognise and extend the rights of those who suffered persecution or violence during the civil war and dictatorship," Deputy Prime Minister Teresa Fernandez de la Vega said, announcing a bill to be sent to parliament. The law would provide compensation for atrocities during Spain's 1936-39 war, in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed, and during the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco which followed it and lasted until he died in 1975. It would also provide help for relatives to find the remains of victims buried in hidden graves and make it easier for foreigners who fought against Franco in the left-wing International Brigades to obtain Spanish citizenship. Opposition leader Mariano Rajoy, of the right-wing Popular Party which has roots in Franco's movement, accused the government of reopening wounds left by the war which ended with the overthrow of a democratically-elected Republican government. "The immense majority of Spaniards don't want to rewrite history, they don't want to talk about about the Republic, and they don't want to talk about Franco," said Rajoy. The initial proposal for the bill by Prime Minister Jose Rodriguez Zapatero, whose grandfather was killed by Franco's forces, unleashed ferocious debate about the Civil War among politicians and newspapers. They scrapped over whether to rename streets commemorating Franco's officials, and, in an apparent bid to limit controversy, the government removed a statue of the old dictator from the centre of Madrid at night in 2005. But, despite the political bitterness, the issue of the Civil War and its aftermath is nowhere to be seen in opinion polls about concerns of people in a wealthy increasingly multi-ethnic country "It doesn't matter to me," said one young woman when asked about the bill by Reuters Television in central Madrid. "It's just history."
ITN Source | July 29, 2006
