The PP City Council of Seville has de facto paralyzed the receipt of the aid of 200,000 euros granted by the central government for the project of exhumation of the Funerary Monument of the cemetery of San Fernando, the largest collective cemetery of victims of Francoism awaiting opening in Seville.
As this newspaper learned from sources close to the process, the State Secretariat for Democratic Memory has activated all the necessary procedures to make the grant effective before the end of the current financial year, but the Seville City Council has not presented the required acceptance, conditioning this approach on the signing of an agreement with the Junta de Andalucía and the Provincial Deputation, despite the signing of the framework protocol by all the administrations involved since June.
With this public money already approved and with the existing institutional consensus, the government of José Luis Sanz could have moved forward with the exhumation work, since it is the City Hall that must develop the action project because it owns the land. However, the lack of initiative from the local government of the PP keeps at a standstill a project that should be completed in 2029, in accordance with the timetable set in the protocol signed by the central government, the Junta de Andalucía, the Provincial Delegation and the Seville City Council itself.
The Andalusian Federation of Democratic Memory has severely criticized the decision of the Seville City Council not to accept state aid for the exhumation of the tomb of the Monument, considering that it represents “a flagrant violation of the protocol signed to carry out the work of exhumation and identification” of the victims and, by extension, “a conscious violation of the current legislation on democratic memory, which obliges public administrations to guarantee the rights to truth, justice and reparation “.
All this in a context where the mayor, José Luis Sanz, has just reissued his alliance with Vox to move forward with the municipal budget, after having deleted all mention of historical memory on the municipal website during his mandate and left his Office of Memory on the verge of liquidation by opening it only twice a month. This newspaper consulted Seville City Hall about accepting state aid, but has not received a response so far.
In the eyes of the memorial federation, the institutional blocking of PP aid to local government responds to an “act of insubordination” and “concession to its far-right partners”, with whom they have just sealed a new budgetary pact to approve the 2026 accounts. In this context, the organization regrets that by “rejecting” public funding, the mayor “chooses Vox and abandons the families of more than 2,600 victims who have been waiting since” Decades ago, they recovered their loved ones from the largest tomb of the Franco regime in Seville.”
Acceptance suspended
A few months after the signing of the general action protocol, signed on June 24, the central government approved the granting of 200,000 euros to the Seville City Council for the exhumation of the tomb of the Monument, as published in the BOE on October 1. As it was a direct allocation, such a sum could be paid without having to wait for the development of the project, once its conditions had been formally accepted.
As this newspaper was able to confirm, the Secretary of State for Democratic Memory informed the Seville town hall of his beneficiary status on October 9 and requested the necessary documents to make the payment. The local administration submitted the required information – including an action plan and an estimated budget – on October 24. In this way, the competent state department was able to carry out all mandatory legal and economic checks in just a few weeks and publish the final concession resolution before the end of November. The grant was designed to be paid in advance, without requiring collateral, once the grant was formally accepted.
However, this formal acceptance – necessary to finalize the payment of the aid – did not take place within the time necessary to execute the payment during the current budget year. And that, as elDiario.es learned, the State Administration has issued several reminders in the absence of a response from the Consistory, warning that the accounting closure at the end of the year would prevent the processing of the transfer if acceptance was not received on time.
As this media learned, the Town Hall said it was waiting to sign the agreement with the Provincial Council and the Authority, even if this was not necessary, since the State could receive the subsidy immediately if it was accepted. This lack of administrative action on the part of the Town Hall ultimately caused the payment of the 200,000 euros planned for this year to fail, further delaying the start of actions in the largest grave while awaiting the exhumation in the capital.
No item in the municipal budget
This situation adds to the absence of municipal positions for the Funerary Monument in the budgets of recent years. The City Hall has not allocated its own funds neither in 2024, nor in 2025, nor in the 2026 budget project, despite the fact that the signed protocol establishes that each administration will assume part of the total cost of the actions.
To date, the Government (through the State Secretariat for Democratic Memory) and the Provincial Council have released financial funds to undertake the necessary work. The development of the technical project, an essential step to be able to sign the agreements and release the rest of the financing, corresponds to the Town Hall as owner of the cemetery land. But José Luis Sanz’s team has not yet taken steps in this direction, although the municipality publicly declares itself committed to this initiative.
The fact is that, in addition to the direct allocation from the State, it is impossible for the rest of the administrations to transfer their funds to the Consistory without the prior existence of a draft action, an extreme measure that the President of the Provincial Council, Javier Fernández (PSOE), has repeatedly demanded of the Mayor of Seville. Ultimately, everything depends on the Town Hall, which must design the work project from which the agreements can be signed with each administration. We are thus witnessing a sort of whiting biting its own tail, since the local government cites the lack of transfers to justify the absence of specific items in its budget.
Action project on hold
In fact, the Provincial Delegation of Seville has reserved financial resources for this work both in 2024 and in 2025, but the absence of a municipal project prevented the transfer of the 331,000 euros that it had allocated for this purpose in its accounts this year, forcing it to redirect these sums towards other actions of democratic memory in the province. The Junta de Andalucía, for its part, indicated that it has resources for exhumations and genetic identification in the 2026 budget, pending the activation of the necessary administrative mechanisms.
The local government of the PP insists on the existence of a “commitment” to exhume the tomb of the Monument, while hiding behind the fact that it is the rest of the administrations which must take the first steps and transfer the funds. The Town Hall affirms that it cannot launch a call for tenders for an action of this magnitude without having first guaranteed all the financing, and recalls that the experience of the Pico Reja tomb involved a call for tenders of more than one million euros.
The administrative procedure planned for the tomb of the Monument is, however, the same as that followed at Pico Reja, where 1,786 bodies of victims of Franco’s repression were saved. The difference is that at that time the project was promoted by the City Council itself, then governed by the PSOE of Juan Espadas, while the PP of José Luis Sanz is reluctant to anything related to a competition that it considers “inappropriate” and with which it does not feel particularly comfortable, especially if we take into account that it has just reissued its alliance with Vox to advance the municipal budget.
The lack of movement on the part of the Consistory keeps the largest exhumation underway in Seville paralyzed and seriously compromises the objective shared by all administrations of completing the work before 2029.
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