Girona to remove Franco symbols on apartment buildings if owners haven't done so by autumn

The Girona city council will carry out inspections on private buildings in the autumn to check whether the owners have removed the Franco-era plaques and symbols that are still visible from public roads.

Furthermore, in any building where the removal has not been carried out, the council will remove the plaques and symbols themselves and pass on the costs to the property. 

In May, the council sent 128 letters to private apartment buildings demanding the removal and reminding residents that the symbols go against democratic memory laws.

Most of the symbols still seen in public are plaques showing insignia of Franco's party, the Falange.

In an interview with the Catalan News Agency, Girona mayor Lluc Salellas said he is confident that "a good group" of homeowners will have removed them by the autumn.

"In the fall we will do a review and, from there, we will start the process of removing them ourselves wherever it has not been done," he said.

The objective of the council is to have all such elements removed by 2025, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of Franco's death.

In recent years, the Girona council has undertaken several initiatives to recover the dignity and memory of the victims of the Franco dictatorship. Yet, there are still some fascist symbols on view in the city, much of it on private buildings.

Old cemetery plaques

Before the end of the year, the city council plans to remove tombstones that glorify Francoism in the old cemetery.

Five tombstones and a cross with inscriptions praising the regime, mostly dated from 1939, will be removed.

It's planned to then replace these plaques with ones that remembers the murders committed in the first months of the civil war.

The original pieces will be made available to the Girona HIstory Museum to catalog and preserve them in a manner deemed appropriate.

The Girona Municipal Archive will verify the identity of the people listed in the registrations and will prepare an online resource documenting the repression during the end of the civil war.