The Supreme Court has rejected the option for the Francisco Franco National Foundation (FNFF) to appeal the changes in the Madrid street map, in application of the Historical Memory Law, that do not affect streets and squares specifically referring to the figure of Franco.
The argument of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the high court is that the foundation, which honors the dictator, does not have active legitimacy to appeal this type of decision. The court considers that extending the active standing of the FNFF “beyond its figure, to achieve the preservation of its legacy, without identifying what exactly that legacy consists of, nor why it considers it worthy of being transmitted to subsequent generations, It would mean expanding the field of active legitimacy to a plurality of unlimited sectoral fields”.
For the magistrates, “it would not be difficult to relate new acts to what happened during four decades of the history of Spain, and through this successive extension to become, or it would seem very similar, to a kind of ‘sui generis’ popular action, when known is that an express legal provision is required for this”.
The Chamber dismisses the appeal filed by the FNFF against the judgment of the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid that declared the appeal of this foundation inadmissible due to lack of legal standing for all the streets that changed their names, by agreement of the Junta de Government of the City of Madrid on May 4, 2017, with the exception of the “Plaza del Caudillo” and the “TravesÃa del General Franco”.
In her sentence, a presentation by Judge Pilar Teso, indicates that it has not been possible to demonstrate that the change of streets has a “beneficial or detrimental effect that is true, real and effective for the foundation”, the only option for which it could be accepted active legitimation.
The Chamber affirms that the appellant party does not show what, specifically, the benefit that the maintenance of the name of the streets causes him, after a possible annulment, nor does it identify what utility or specific benefit would be derived from such annulment for the appellant .
“Nor, finally, the specific damage caused by the change of street names is expressed, except for the feeling of nostalgia produced by the passage of time that increases with the arrival of very different ones, according to what we infer from the argument put forward,” pick up the sentence.
For the magistrates, this type of feelings cannot integrate “an interest worthy of the protection provided by the legal system when it comes to the exercise of the action in the contentious-administrative order,” the court underlines.
In this sense, it warns that “it cannot configure an interest that can be branded as legitimate”, given its connection with that objectively exalting effect that the denominations entailed in the terms that we have indicated in the previous rationale. “Moreover, for the purposes of this legitimate nature of the interest, the link between Franco’s legacy, which the appellant invokes, to the nomenclature of some streets in Madrid is specified in the actions of prominent soldiers or in significant events that occurred during the uprising. military and the civil warâ€, conclude the magistrates.
The sentence includes a dissenting opinion of magistrate José Luis Requero in which he maintains that the appeal of the FNFF should have been upheld and the appealed sentence annulled, with the consequent return of proceedings to the TSJ of Madrid so that it could decide on the merits in the part that he didn’t.
The magistrate appreciates “a legitimate interest to oppose an act dictated in application of Law 52/2007 of Historical Memory, then there is a direct link between what was aired in the lawsuit – whether or not there is exaltation of Francoism in the name of certain streets – and the purposes of the appellant in favor of that regimeâ€.
