For a few days now, several fascist graffiti have defaced the monolith that since 2018 has honored the International Brigades in Caspe (province of Zaragoza) that fought alongside the Republican army during the Civil War.
As Chunta Aragonesista (CHA) reported this Monday, the vandalized monument presents phrases that read “not one euro repealed” or FE JONS” (Spanish Phalange of the Jons) as well as Celtic crosses used by neo-Nazi parties.
From the regionalist party, they demand that the council “rehabilitate, paint and leave clean again” the monolith and relate this attack to the recent repeal by the autonomous Executive PP-Vox of the Democratic Memory law of Aragon. “The new government is giving wings to these extremist people to not respect symbols of peace and freedom,” they say.
The monolith, inaugurated in March 2018 on a hill on the Caspe-Maella highway, commemorates the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Caspe, which took place in a very nearby place between March 14 and 29, 1938, and represents a tribute to the International Brigades that fought in said battle.
The opening ceremony was attended by some brigade members from France, England, Scotland and Germany, as well as Spaniards and their families.
This is not the first time in its six-year history that the monolith has been vandalized. According to CHA, praise for Francisco Franco appeared on previous occasions (around the time of the exhumation of his remains from the Valley of the Fallen) and phrases such as “Long live Christ” or “Murderers.”
Faced with these events, the political party reiterated its “firm commitment” to the defense of democratic memory and its “total rejection” of any form of vandalism that seeks to “erase or distort” the past.
