A HEATED debate in Palma’s metropolis council has reignited historic tensions surrounding one of many darkest episodes of Spain’s Civil Warfare.
Officers clashed over the legacy of the cruiser Baleares and its alleged position within the 1937 bombing of fleeing civilians from Malaga – an occasion now extensively recognised as a warfare crime.
The controversy unfolded throughout a latest full council session when the Councillor for City Planning, Oscar Fidalgo, emphatically denied claims that the Baleares was concerned within the notorious assault on civilians escaping alongside the coastal highway from Malaga to Almeria, generally known as La Desbanda. “Not a single shot was fired from the warship throughout the Desbanda in Málaga,” Fidalgo acknowledged. “The cruiser was present process testing on the time.”
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His remarks sparked rapid backlash from left-wing councillors, particularly from the Socialist Celebration (PSOE), who argued that the assertion contradicts documented historic accounts. PSOE councillor Pepe Martinez challenged Fidalgo’s claims by citing passages from El Crucero Baleares 1936–1938, a ebook by historians Jeroni Fullana and Eduardo Connolly, which particulars the ship’s participation within the tragic occasions.
Martinez, who introduced a replica of the ebook from the Cort library together with further volumes from his private assortment, handed them to Fidalgo on the council ground. “Get knowledgeable and skim historians so that you don’t make a idiot of your self within the eyes of the individuals of Malaga,” Martínez urged.
The dispute ties immediately right into a broader authorized and political battle over a monument in Palma’s Parc de Sa Feixina, erected within the Nineteen Forties to honor the 765 largely Mallorcan crew members of the Baleares who perished when the ship was sunk by Republican forces in 1938.
Left-wing teams have lengthy campaigned for the monument’s elimination, arguing that it serves as a relic of Francoist propaganda. The Supreme Courtroom has presently protected the monument from demolition, whereas the Constitutional Courtroom has but to situation a last ruling.
Within the newest plenary session, PSOE tabled a movement calling for the withdrawal of the monument’s protected standing from town’s heritage register. The proposal was voted down by the conservative Partido Well-liked (PP) and far-right Vox social gathering, who keep that the monument has already been stripped of express Francoist symbols below a 2010 settlement led by then-Socialist mayor Aina Calvo.
Fidalgo criticised PSOE for what he described as political inconsistency. “They spent public cash to take away the symbolism and settle the controversy, and now they’re asking us to do the other of what the judges are saying,” he stated.
Regardless of mounting proof and ongoing scholarly debate, Fidalgo stood agency. “There is no such thing as a critical historian who helps these claims,” he stated. “What I say on this plenary session hurts you, however it’s my opinion and that of related historians. You’ve gotten hit a nerve with me. I stand by all the things I’ve stated.”
The talk has left no clear decision in sight, with authorized questions over the monument’s future nonetheless pending in Spain’s highest court docket – and the historic fact about Baleares’ actions throughout the Civil Warfare persevering with to divide opinion practically a century later.
