VOX mayor in a small Andalucia town is facing criticism after distributing a 2026 calendar adorned with pictures of fascist dictator Franco.
Francisco Garcia Aviles, the mayor of Puente de Genave and a member of the Vox party, was reported to the Asosoiacion para la Recuperacion de la Memoria Historica de Jaen (Association for the recovery of Jaen’s historical memory) for distributing calendars with controversial symbols and images.
‘We consider it an embarrassing and barbaric broadcast which glorifies the Franco dictatorship that brought so much death, violence, repression, poverty, and backwardness to the Spanish people’, says the president of the group, Miguel Angel Valdivia.
Focusing on the distribution of controversial symbols through Facebook, the report names the Junta directly as well as various families of those repressed during the Franco era.
It adds to an open file by the Subdelegacion del Gobierno en Jaen (Government’s Jaen Subdelegation) that shows the content of the calendar and will be handed to the Secretary of State for Democratic Memory – only he has the power to initiate change and resolve the issue.
Puente de Genave’s mayor is a repeat offender, in 2024 he shared a calendar that bore images of Franco and Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera with the phrase ‘I am responsible only to God and history’.
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Having their mayor act in such a way ‘stains the good name of the town of Puente de Genave’, a place in Jaen that has approximately 2,180 residents, according to Angel Valdivia.
Angel Valdivia pleads action from the public institutions responsible for enforcing the 20/22 Memoria Democratica and asks them to guarantee that they apply the Ley de Memoria Democratica.
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