The forgotten victims of the Franco dictatorship

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General Francisco Franco had thousands of people because of their sexual orientation, arrest. Until today, the victims are waiting for justice. Enrique Anarte Lazo has made some of them.

Maria de los Dolores Gamez is standing next to the huge door of a dilapidated building. The 81-Year-old looks at a sign next to the entrance. To be able to read it, you must stand on the tips of the toes. The inscription recalls the “historical injustice” that had to experience homosexual and Transgender in this building, the old prison of the city of Huelva in Western Andalusia.

It is not the first Time that Gamez of sexual minorities, were imprisoned in the city of and abused. However, she has never discovered before, this small monument. In fact, it was hung up only this year – almost four decades after same-sex relations were decriminalized in Spain. That was in 1979. “I think it is good that politicians finally do something about this issue,” says Gamez. “We had too many years of silence.”

Controversial reburial of dictator Franco

In the past month, the Spanish government ordered the reburial of the corpse of the former dictator General Francisco Franco from the controversial memorial to the “Valle de los Caídos” (valley of the Fallen). The Parliament adopted the law on regulation on Thursday, after Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez had found enough supporters. Especially Liberals and Conservatives abstained in the vote. The “valley of the Fallen”, 50 kilometers North of Madrid, had become in the past few years, a place of pilgrimage for right and extreme Right. In the Mausoleum of thousands of victims of the Franco regime to rest next to the dictator himself.

The “Valle de los Caidos”: The valley of the prisoners in Spain is controversial

The discussion of the reburial has triggered a memory of a debate in a country where there are still more than 2,000 mass graves. They come mainly from the Spanish civil war (1936-1939), a conflict that is referred to by many historians as a precursor of the Second world war. He marked the beginning of a decades-long authoritarian rule and Repression, which only ended with the free elections in 1977.

Franco, from 1936 to 1975, was during his reign only to his political opponents. He also pursued those who dared to oppose the nationalist-Catholic model of society. Historians found out that the dictator had two “specialized” prisons for those setting up, which were condemned after his homophobic laws: one in Huelva and one in Badajoz on the Portuguese border.

Three months in prison, forever criminalized

Antoni Ruiz was born in 1958 in a small town in the vicinity of Valencia, in the East of the country. He was one of the prisoners. At 17, he came out to his family as gay. Finally, a nun betrayed him to the police. “That was the Moment when my ordeal started,” he says today of the DW. Ruiz was taken to various prisons, until he finally landed in prison in Badajoz. Legally, he was not grown up at the time.

Antoni Ruiz is fighting for the rights of homosexuals in Spain, as here at a Demonstration in Valencia

Three months he spent in Badajoz, which felt to him like an eternity. “No one wanted to give you a Job,” he says today. He was a Criminal and a homosexual – and the police informed his potential employer about it. He had to struggle to make ends meet and felt socially excluded.

Those who were persecuted, such as Ruiz, want your files to be deleted from the computer system of the police. In addition, they demand financial compensation for the LGBTI victims (lesbian, Gay, Bi-, Trans – and inter-sexual) of the two laws, the minority nalisierten between 1954 and 1979, crime.

There is no easier way, because each victim has to make an individual legal process. Sometimes it was tedious, says Ruiz, because the records do not always speak of a homosexual Offense, even though that was the reason for the arrest.

These documents record the arrest of Antoni Ruiz

According to the “Association of former social prisoners in Spain”, the head of Ruiz, have only got 116 people, compensation for those convictions by the state. The government has confirmed the number last year. Historians estimate that during the Franco regime, at least 5,000 people because of their sexual orientation were sentenced.

Excuse me or pardon?

Spain needs to do much more to give to these citizens for justice, calls for Ramon Martinez. The philologist has recently published an Essay on the history of the Spanish LGBTI activism, in which he also identifies examples from other countries. Among other things, he mentioned the Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier: He asked in June to apologise for the persecution of homosexuals in the Nazi period and in the following decades.

In contrast, the United Kingdom to 2017 published a posthumous pardon for homosexual under the so-called Turing-law. The name of the British war hero Alan Turing was castrated in 1952 because of his sexual orientation. Two years later, he committed suicide at the age of 41 years. Posthumously, he was awarded in 2013 a Royal pardon. Both Martinez as well as Ruiz criticise the UK approach. “Whom you pardon? It is the state that has violated human rights,” provides Ruiz.

A room of the prison in Huelva

Martinez stresses the urgency to work on the collective memory of Spain: “In contrast to Berlin, Amsterdam or Cologne, there are in any Spanish city is a monument to the LGBTI victims.” But it was important to emphasize the importance of historic places. Also the old prison in Huelva, which is now a ruin – and for the Public and the press closed.

When Maria de los Dolores Gamez your feelings is to describe such a place triggers in the middle of your hometown, the way she quotes a poem, which she read with her granddaughter at the in-house tasks-support: “There, far away, where the Forgotten live,” she says. The line written by Luis Cernuda. He is a well-known homosexual Poet who fled during the Spanish civil war into exile. Gamez wonders if the victims show up at all in the textbooks. “This is no justice,” she says, before continuing on your evening walk.