“IMPUNITY BOMBS”
The restoration of truth is an inescapable condition in the fight against all forms of domination and oppression.
40 years of dictatorship and 30 of induced amnesia have tried to erase the memory of a process of social change crushed by a militar coup with the decisive support of the Nazi-fascist powers for an entire generation.
In flagrant violation of the international law and the laws of war, the aggressor side committed numerous crimes. Among them, the Aviazione Legionaria and the Condor Legion, with more than a thousand aircraft, conducted systematically the first saturation bombings clearly aimed at killing and terrorizing civilians in Gernika, Málaga, Barcelona, Valencia, and Bajo Aragón.
In Catalonia alone Nazi-fascist aviation caused 5000 deaths in 181 villages and attacked the urban centers, with the result of thousands of buildings destroyed and extensive damage caused to civilian infraestructure.
From then until today neither the successors of the aggressor states (the Italian Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany) nor the Spanish state, successor of the regime established by Franco have assumed their obligation to symbolic and material compensation for the pain and terror sown by their acts.
Quite the oposite, the impunity enjoyed by Franco’s supporters inside the Spanish borders is now also covering the countries who having lost World War II were forced to compensate their victims in that war but have never been forced to compensate their victims in the Spanish Civil War in the same way.
In view of the passive and timid behaviour of the Catalan and Spanish institutions, it is up to the civil society -the same who suffered the horrors of the bombings, mass killings, and decades of repression- to seek redress for crimes commited betweeen 1936 and 1939 by the troops sent by Mussolini and Hitler to help the Francoist rebels.
For these reasons:
In application of the principles of Recognition, Repair and No Repetition Guarantee, we DEMAND that the Italian Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany
1.- Accept their institutional responsibility for the involvement of their troops in the Spanish Civil War.
2.- Symbolically and materially compensate the aggrieved populations
3.- Subordinate their commercial and defense policy to the aforementioned non-repetition guarantee.
We also address this demand to the Spanish institutions as lawful successors of the dictatorial regime of General Franco.