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Rally of neo-fascists at the monument to the soldiers of the Blue Division in Madrid
In September 2020, Spain banned by law any justification and glorification of Francoism. The relevant requirements are spelled out in the Law of Democratic Memory, which was adopted by the national government. According to the new law, the activity of the organization Franco Foundation, which has 1500 members, becomes impossible.
However, until then, actions in support of the memory of the dictator Franco and his associates, had been very common. After 2004, for the first time since the end of the dictatorship, the socialist government of President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero took some initial steps toward recognizing the victims of the Franco repression. First, in 2006, Spain signed the UN International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. And after that, in 2007, the Spanish Parliament passed Law 52/2007 of December 26, commonly known as the Historical Memory Law, which, among other things, provided funding for the exhumation and identification of human remains from mass graves and partially addressed the issue of Franco memory in public space.
As a consequence, already in 2007 and in the following years, people began to come to the streets or squares in Spain with the names of former Francoists as well as of soldiers who took part in the 1936 coup. In 2017, this phenomenon became less prominent on the streets of Spanish cities. There are still private museums dedicated to the Franco regime figures and the Spanish army units that participated in World War II on the side of Hitler's Germany. For example, the private museum of the Blue Division in Madrid, which belongs to an association of former fighters, displays uniforms, weapons, photographs, and personal belongings of soldiers of the Blue Division. The association and museum have a page on the Internet.
