In a meeting on Wednesday with the mayor of Barcelona, ??Jaume Collboni, the Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, assured in every letter that the National Police Headquarters on Via Laietana in the city will be designated a place by memory. “I transfer it with absolute security,” he stated. ERC has seized on this statement to demand that the minister, through a written question registered in Congress, specify his intentions. Sumar has added himself to the petition and has also registered written questions to the Government echoing the words of Víctor Torres.
The Via Laietana police station was the scene of torture during the Franco regime and on countless occasions Catalan public administrations and entities have asked the Government to change its function so that it becomes a space of democratic memory to honor the victims and their families.
ERC, in its writing, recalls that the building was the headquarters of the feared Political-Social Brigade (BPS), a police unit “responsible for pursuing, detaining and interrogating opponents of the regime, as well as repressing any manifestation of political dissidence during the decades of the dictatorship”.
Likewise, the Republicans state that the recovery of this space is also “an opportunity to educate and raise awareness about the horrors of the past and ensure that they are not repeated in the future.”
Although Moncloa sources assure that the designation of the police station as a “place of memory” does not necessarily imply that the building stops being a police station and being occupied by the National Police, the Esquerra deputy Francesc-Marc Álvaro demands specifics from Víctor Torres and to present a calendar to carry out his commitment.
Likewise, Álvaro asks if Moncloa intends to transfer ownership of the building to the Generalitat and how it is going to coordinate the transformation process with the Ministry of the Interior, which has always been opposed to any type of resignification. The Republicans’ proposals include the need to ensure that the police station’s historical archives, “which contain relevant information about Franco’s repression”, are preserved and made available to everyone.
The minister’s position caused the immediate reaction of the police union Jupol, which announced a rally in front of the Prefecture for next Thursday to oppose any attempt to declare that space a “place of memory”, even if it remains a police station. The union denounces that it would be a first step towards the “definitive eviction” of the National Police and that progress would be made in the “expropriation” of the building.
