Ayuso, Etta and Franco

Isabel Díaz Ayuso, President of the Community of Madrid, has brought the specter of ETA back to the fore. It doesn’t stop.

Instead of devoting itself to solving its own problems deriving, for example, from public-private management of health care, which flushes out of the system those who cannot pay, who are concerned about EBITDA and return on investment, rather than providing health for all and in appropriate conditions, it pulls dead terrorism out of the hat again and again.

“ETA is preparing its attack on the Basque Country and Navarre, while supporting Pedro Sanchez, and let them say that it is a lie, because there is no greater immorality, no greater betrayal of Spain than this, it cannot be, it cannot be Beldo keeping Sanchez.”

This came on the occasion of the recent demonstration called by the People’s Party in Madrid. She read the letter while looking at the paper on the podium, so as not to forget a single word, like a good diligent student.

We must remind him, at the risk of naivety, that ETA announced the cessation of its terrorist activities in 2011, and that it was completely disbanded in 2018. But these statements do not matter to Ayuso when he weighs truth and political interest. Use it for ETA in marketing Gobili’s style, which allows him to feed the most populist impulses, is nothing new. He knows that digging into that container of historical memory, Etta’s memory specifically, gives him voices, and he continues with it, right or wrong.

The bad thing is that he forgets historical memory in general, which does not matter to him. For example, that historical memory affecting his party, and that which he created, was fully integrated into the core of the National Movement, the movement that supported Franco’s dictatorship.

In January 2024, Ayuso participated in a tribute to Gregorio Ordonez, who was killed by ETA, and said: “Today we are in mourning, while Sánchez votes for the person who put us in mourning.”

He immediately received the response from Ordonez’s sister: “Once again, using my brother Gregorio, like the rest of the victims of terrorism, for their exclusive political purposes. Not like that.”

“It’s not like that,” Ordonez’s sister, the president of CovIte, said to her. But it’s no use, Ayuso is still determined to use Eta’s ghost to get votes using that Joseph Goebbels quote, simple messages, false if necessary, simple, recognizable and repeated over and over again. The Nazi strategist explained that “any news of little value must be transformed into a serious threat.” Thus, with this repetition of the message, Ayuso penetrates those who listen to her and do not distinguish, or do not want to distinguish, between Eta and Beldo, or between Eta and PSOE or PNV, and even between Eta and Euskadi, and between Eta and Navarra.

This position of a high-ranking politician, the President of the Community of Madrid, is not only despicable, but it also opens the door to the worst instincts, generating hatred, the same hatred that arose during the Second Spanish Republic and led to a failed coup, a successful rebel civil war, and a brutal dictatorship that lasted until the dictator’s death in bed.

It may be useful to remind Ayuso that her party was born in the Francoist magma, and that despite this, no one should call her Franco, at all times, just because she is from the Party of the People. It is a matter of historical memory, such as Eta’s memory in Ayuso’s use, or in this case Franco’s memory.

Even today, if we look at the website of the Popular Party, we can read the following: “The origins of the Popular Party go back to the Popular Alliance, a formation that was born within the framework of the transitional period, as a union between different currents of the democratic and reformist right.”

Does Ayuso know what these “democratic and reformist right” movements are?

I’m going to remind you. They were associations created by Franco’s ministers, with dictatorial origins, such as Federico Silva Muñoz, Laureano López Rudo, or Gonzalo de la Mora, associations that were later renewed to create the Popular Alliance with Manuel Fraga Iribarn.

Does Ayuso know under what legislation these associations were established?

I’ll remind you of that too. They did so thanks to an essential element, the legal regime of the right of public association, which was approved unanimously at the plenary session of the National Council of the National Movement, on December 16, 1974. during Franco’s lifetime.

Some time later, it was ratified by the post-Franco government headed by Arias Navarro, and passed as a decree-law to Franco Cortés, who approved it.

Franco’s law defined associations as “complementary means of Spaniards’ participation in political tasks, through natural entities, as well as channels for the expression of public opinion”, but, of course, in strict obedience to “the principles of the movement and other fundamental laws of the Kingdom”. That is, it was pure Francoism.

From there, the Popular Alliance was born, as the PP website currently states. They did not even call it a “party,” because that concept aroused so much enthusiasm among its creators, Francoists.

The Franco regime was forced and pushed to change the regime because the dictatorship remained like an island in Europe, after the disappearance of the dictatorship in Portugal, and because the people were constantly pressing in favor of democracy.

Today it would be unfair for a member of the People’s Party to be called Franco just because he is from the People’s Party. As with the Eusko affiliate Alkartasuna or Alternatiba, members of EHBildu, they will be named as a member of the ETA.

But it is clear that this party, the Ayuso party, does not come from liberalism or conservatism, like other parties on the European right, but directly from Francoism. It is another original sin of this transformation, such as the one that allowed the legitimization of the head of state chosen by today’s dictator. Influencer Juan Carlos I.

Through Ayuso’s goblin tactics, we could focus on simple, repetitive messages, and call him Franco at all times, following the strategy from which he seems to gain a great deal of profit, which is to classify his political enemies as ETA or ETA devotees, indiscriminately.