Fifteen streets, a square and a walk, waiting for a name

In the Municipality of Navalmoral they are taking it easy to change the name of the streets in compliance with the Law of Historical Memory, whose definitive list was published in March by the Official Gazette of the Province through an announcement addressed to those interested.

Since then only two have been modified. The one dedicated to the teacher and writer Pilar Galán, in the vicinity of the house of culture, and Trabajadoras de Fuentecapala, between the Jardincillo and the town hall, instead of Sanz Catalá and Ramón Franco. There are still 15 streets, a square and a walk to be renamed.

The plenary approval took place on December 9, in compliance with Law 52/2007, “by which rights are recognized and extended in favor of those who suffered persecution or violence, for political, ideological or religious belief reasons, during the Civil War and the Dictatorship, and Law 1/2019, of January 21, on the historical and democratic memory of Extremadura.

Most of the names to be removed are military related to the Civil War and the Dictatorship, such as Comandante Vázquez, Ruiz de Alda, General Aranda, Queipo de Llano, Ramón Franco, Onesimo Redondo or General Sanjurjo. Also Calvo Sotelo, Luis Julve or Agustín Carreño, the most controversial of all, by far.

To the point that the family of the pediatrician and mayor between 1942 and 1957 has taken the matter to court because they understand that the law has been used improperly, assuring that “he never extolled or sponsored any uprising or act of repression, If not the opposite”.

acquaintances

As for the new names, some are well known and need little introduction, such as Jesús Rubio, Pepe Vizcaíno, Julio Romero, Teodora Carrasco, Juan Andrés Yáñez or the National Antimalarial Institute.

But with others, an informative campaign will be necessary, especially those proposed by United for Navalmoral. Like Josefina Triguero, the first woman to serve as a judge in Spain, in the moral court in 1978; Santiago González Martín, one of the hundreds of people from Extremadura who died in the Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War, or Ramón González Cid, the first mayor of Navalmoral and the first president of the Diputación de Cáceres in the Second Republic, who was shot in the provincial capital at Christmas 1937.

Or Ignacio Mateos Guija, a jurist by training who became Civil Governor of Cáceres. The proponents remember this when the coup soldiers arrived in Navalmoral, he took refuge with a large part of the Corporation in the current town hall building, from which he managed to escape by jumping from the rear and helped by the street sweeper Juan Nieto, who hid him in a cart full of straw that was pushed to Talavera de la Reina.

He died in exile in Mexico in January 1968 at the age of 63.