Michael Coy
A HEATED debate in Palma’s city council has reignited historical tensions surrounding one of the darkest episodes of Spain’s Civil War.
Officials clashed over the legacy of the cruiser Baleares and its alleged role in the 1937 bombing of fleeing civilians from Malaga – an event now widely recognised as a war crime.
The controversy unfolded during a recent full council session when the Councillor for Urban Planning, Oscar Fidalgo, emphatically denied claims that the Baleares was involved in the infamous attack on civilians escaping along the coastal road from Malaga to Almeria, known as La Desbanda. “Not a single shot was fired from the warship during the Desbanda in Málaga,” Fidalgo stated. “The cruiser was undergoing testing at the time.”
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His remarks sparked immediate backlash from left-wing councillors, especially from the Socialist Party (PSOE), who argued that the statement contradicts documented historical accounts. PSOE councillor Pepe Martinez challenged Fidalgo’s claims by citing passages from El Crucero Baleares 1936–1938, a book by historians Jeroni Fullana and Eduardo Connolly, which details the ship’s participation in the tragic events.
Martinez, who brought a copy of the book from the Cort library along with additional volumes from his personal collection, handed them to Fidalgo on the council floor. “Get informed and read historians so you don’t make a fool of yourself in the eyes of the people of Malaga,” Martínez urged.
The dispute ties directly into a broader legal and political battle over a monument in Palma’s Parc de Sa Feixina, erected in the 1940s to honor the 765 mostly Mallorcan crew members of the Baleares who perished when the ship was sunk by Republican forces in 1938.
Left-wing groups have long campaigned for the monument’s removal, arguing that it serves as a relic of Francoist propaganda. The Supreme Court has currently protected the monument from demolition, while the Constitutional Court has yet to issue a final ruling.
In the latest plenary session, PSOE tabled a motion calling for the withdrawal of the monument’s protected status from the city’s heritage register. The proposal was voted down by the conservative Partido Popular (PP) and far-right Vox party, who maintain that the monument has already been stripped of explicit Francoist symbols under a 2010 agreement led by then-Socialist mayor Aina Calvo.
Fidalgo criticised PSOE for what he described as political inconsistency. “They spent public money to remove the symbolism and settle the debate, and now they’re asking us to do the opposite of what the judges are saying,” he said.
Despite mounting evidence and ongoing scholarly debate, Fidalgo stood firm. “There is no serious historian who supports these claims,” he said. “What I say in this plenary session hurts you, but it is my opinion and that of relevant historians. You have hit a nerve with me. I stand by everything I have said.”
The debate has left no clear resolution in sight, with legal questions over the monument’s future still pending in Spain’s highest court – and the historical truth about Baleares’ actions during the Civil War continuing to divide opinion nearly a century later.
