in Almudena cemetery: Memorial to the people of Madrid

This memorial projected by the Manuela Carmena City Council (Más Madrid) in 2019 should have contained the almost three thousand names of the victims shot by the Franco regime between 1939 and 1944. In July 2019 it was almost finished but the new mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez Almeida (PP) decided to change the project. In this way today the memorial homages “all the people of Madrid who from 1936 to 1944 suffered violence for political, ideological and religious reasons”. According to Juan José Mateo and Berta Ferrero (El País, 28.11.2019) “after learning that the new mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez Almeida (PP), has withdrawn from the Almudena Memorial the names of the Republicans shot by the Franco regime between 1939 and 1944, the seven members of the Historical Memory Commissioner promoted by Manuela Carmena remind that their 2018 proposal was, precisely, a monument without names. Only a QR code, they raised then, would refer to the list of murdered. The experts also opted to honor separately both the victims of Republican Madrid in the Civil War (1936-1939) and those of Francoist Madrid in the postwar period (1939-1944, and the only ones remembered in the project of the previous Government). That is the reason that now separates some of them from the Martínez Almeida project. The reason? Instead of two plaques, one per side, the new mayor proposes a single milestone —without names— linked by the same phrase: "El pueblo de Madrid a todos los madrileños que del 36 al 44 sufrieron la violencia por razones políticas, ideológicas y religiosas. Paz, piedad y perdón" / "The people of Madrid to all the people of Madrid who from 36 to 44 suffered violence for political, ideological and religious reasons.. Peace, mercy and forgiveness". At the front of the memorial stands the sculpture created by the artist Fernando Sánchez Castillo: eight oaks, metal replicas of the natural trees that were uprooted, stripped of their leaves, cut off the branches, the roots exposed to the air, lying on the ground. These photos were taken in January 2022.