Ayuso complains that the Executive wants to remember the tortures of the dictatorship in Sol and proposes telling “tourists” about those in the Canary Islands

The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has expressed her “indignation” this Wednesday at the central government’s decision to recall that the headquarters of the Presidency of Madrid was a place of torture, imprisonment and harassment as the base of the general directorate of security (DGS) of the Franco dictatorship between 1939 and 1979. In a letter addressed to Minister Ángel Víctor Torres , in charge of promoting the declaration of the Real Casa de Correos as a place of democratic memory, the conservative leader has described this move as “unusual”; she recalled that she has appealed it to the Constitutional Court, as EL PAÍS reported ; and she has accused the central government of having a “manipulative and ideological intention” by linking the building with a plaque to the dictatorship, arguing that the complex has had many uses throughout history. Furthermore, taking advantage of the fact that the minister is also former president of the Canary Islands (2019-2023), Ayuso has invited him to declare three buildings in the archipelago as places of democratic memory, informing tourists about it.

“Perhaps tourists who land on the island today would appreciate being informed, through a plaque and explanatory tours, that the airfield where they arrive on holiday was a concentration camp ,” Ayuso says ironically about Gando Airport, now in Gran Canaria, on whose grounds, she describes, “a concentration camp” was built between 1937 and 1940.

“Perhaps travellers arriving on that island would appreciate being reminded, with a plaque and guided tours, that they are stepping on an airport built by political prisoners,” insists the president of Madrid in the case of Los Rodeos airport, today Tenerife Norte-Ciudad de La Laguna, “on whose lands a concentration camp was also located in 1937 whose prisoners were used as forced labourers to build the aerodrome.” As a third example, Ayuso cites the Canarian regional parliament, which already has a plaque commemorating that war councils were held there by the Francoist side.

“But this is not comparable to the Real Casa de Correos,” explains Gutmaro Gómez Bravo, a doctor in History from the Complutense University of Madrid and a specialist in the social history of violence in contemporary Spain. “It means minimizing the headquarters of the General Directorate of Security, the space that centralized all the political persecution of Francoism. There is no point of comparison in any way,” he adds.

“Moreover, talking about concentration camps is a bit of a stretch,” he argues about a name that inevitably brings to mind the millions of Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust . “In general, [those in the Canary Islands] were classification camps for prisoners, which would not be bad to recognise as a place of memory if there was forced labour,” he adds. “But the magnitude of what happened in the Canary Islands is not there: it is in the missing people, in the people who were thrown into the sea, into the wells, in the direct repression that there was, and that would also be interesting to recognise.”

In any case, the comparison that Ayuso establishes has nothing to do with historical rigor, nor with the magnitude of what happened. It is about trying to reflect an alleged grievance. All, to maintain the political pulse that has confronted her with the president of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, since August 2019, when he came to power. A constant confrontation that has already affected fiscal, international, health, educational or cultural policy, and that already affects even the consensus of the Transition.

“Why not the parliament and the Canary Islands airports, but the Royal Post Office, yes, Minister?” asks Ayuso in her letter to Torres, where she describes as “nonsense” with “clear manipulative and ideological intention” the intention to declare the Royal Post Office a place of memory. A decision that, in the opinion of the president of Madrid, seeks to give the headquarters of the regional Presidency “manipulative, divisive, opportunistic and harmful meanings”.

Ayuso adds: “The Canarian Parliament and the airports of Gran Canaria and Tenerife have their history and are, today, what they are (...) The Royal Post Office has been, for more than 250 years, the central post office and witness to the events of May 2, 1808, and has housed the Captaincy General, the Military Government and the headquarters of the Ministry of the Interior even with the Popular Front Government. And it is, today, what it is (...)”.

The declaration of a place of democratic memory “normally” culminates with the placement of a commemorative plaque; actions of “dissemination, in multiple media and explanatory formats, of why it is a place of memory”; and exhibitions, as explained by a spokesperson for the central government when the process affecting the Real Casa de Correos began. The regional government argues that the period of torture by the DGS only represents 15% of the history of the Real Casa de Correos and that the placement of the plaque would affect its administrative use and invade the autonomous powers.

As EL PAÍS reported, the regional government had already opposed the placing of a plaque commemorating the building's past in May 2024, after a request was made by journalist Nino Olmeda, who was arrested during the dictatorship and still remembers the complex as a terrifying place, full of pain and screams, with cells and torturers. The government spokesman, Miguel Ángel García Martín, went so far as to say that the building has “a lot of history”, recalling, among other things, that the Ministry of the Interior of the Second Republic was located in the same place, “when many Madrid residents were also persecuted for their ideas”.

Both Ayuso and the spokesperson argued that the only plaques that had a place in the Government headquarters were the existing ones, “because they unite and do not divide.” One honors the heroes of May 2; another remembers the victims of 11-M and those who helped them; and the last, those who died during the Covid pandemic.

Constitutional Court

However, the president's powerful chief of staff, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, went even further. In a letter to Olmeda and reported by this newspaper, he argued that Madrid is "full of buildings" in which "reprehensible acts have been committed, such as those that occurred in the police stations during the Civil War, without any plaque to remember the horrors that occurred."

In contrast, the central government argued in October the need to act on a building that housed horrors described by Mario Martínez Zauner in Presos contra Franco (Galaxia Gutenberg, 2019): “The declaration of a Place of Democratic Memory aims to rescue from oblivion and recognise those who suffered humiliation, torture or found death in its facilities,” reads the initiative led by Minister Ángel Victor Torres. “The building constitutes a reference and symbol of human rights violations during the Franco regime,” he continues. He adds: “The declaration of a Place of Memory is intended to contribute to the knowledge of the truth of what happened in its facilities with the aim of ensuring that similar events never happen again in our country.”

The dispute between the two administrations is at its peak. And the Constitutional Court is the stage where it will be decided. There, Madrid has registered an appeal against the initiation of the declaration of a place of memory. And that is where the State will go if Ayuso does not modify a law approved in December that allows her to veto any change in the Royal Post Office, and with it, prohibit the placement of the plaque that commemorates that there was torture in Sol.