• Trial: The Franco family alludes to Fraga to maintain that the Pazo Meirás is not public: it denied them money to rehabilitate it
  • The dictator's will Pazo de Meirás, Franco's main material legacy, at risk for the family

Researchers who studied the process of acquiring the Pazo de Meirás and its subsequent management during the Dictatorship, as Franco's official summer residence, have given the family a serious setback on Tuesday in their attempt to keep the property in front of the property in their name. State demand to pass it to the public patrimony.

They have proven that the dependencies were acquired as a result of a "coercive" popular cost in which the people of A Coruña donated money for their acquisition in 1938 and that it had a public use and was financed and managed "almost as if it were part of the El Pardo Palace ", then the official residence of the Head of State.

The authors of the book Meirás, a pazo, a caudillo, a plunder , Carlos Babío and Manuel Pérez Lorenzo, and the historian and president of the commission of experts appointed by the Xunta de Galicia to analyze the possible claim of the Pazo, Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas , they declared in the morning and afternoon hours in the second session of the trial that intends to elucidate the ownership of the property of the Pazo and confirmed all the ends in which the demand of the State Advocacy, to which the Xunta de Galicia, the municipalities of Sada and A Coruña, and the A Coruña Provincial Council.

Based on a long documentation that appears in archives and institutions, they insisted that the Pazo became Franco's summer residence - a use that his heirs have maintained to date - as a result of a process promoted by the so-called Junta pro Pazo del Caudillo , constituted on March 3, 1938 to acquire "an estate to be given or donated in the name of the province of La Coruña to the Generalissimo of the Armies and Head of the National State His Excellency Mr. Francisco Franco Bahamonde".

This literality of how this Board defines itself is worth them to conclude that the origin of the purchase of the Pazo from its hitherto owner, heir to Emilio Pardo Bazán, was to donate it to the Head of State for his condition as such, not by title. particular. "Originally they were for the head of state. Then that changes and goes to donation for private residence," said Núñez Seixas.

The "power of Franco" and "therefore, his consideration as head of state" was "emphatically" the germ of the operation, in the opinion of Babío and Pérez Lorenzo, who cited documentation as an interrogation of six and a half hours Interview with Carmela Arias, widow of the Count of Fenosa, Pedro Barrié de la Maza, one of the promoters of the Board, in which he states that "the idea was not disinterested, he intended it to be with us in Galicia for a time".

They sought "to make Coruña the state capital for a month," to move the state apparatus that accompanied Franco and achieve social, economic, and political benefits for local elites. The Dictator confirmed that claim in his thank you speech, because, according to the researchers, "the moment he assumes that donation he does so as head of state, he promises infrastructure for Galicia in his speech, that a private individual does not do."

An official "suitcase" with the Civil House

The State Attorney's Office highlights the "clearly official and public nature of the Pazo de Meirás" between 1938 and 1975. Investigators confirm this and assured in the trial in the First Instance Court number 1 of A Coruña that the "Civil House" managed its operation, from the hiring of personnel to the expenses of the agricultural operation that was within the Pazo or heating. He kept all the accounting and every year appears in the accounts of the Civil House "a game with fixed expenses" for its maintenance.

To deepen this public nature, which the lawyer for the six grandsons of the defendant Franco tried to discuss throughout the session, the commission of experts appointed by the Xunta asked a historian to rummage through the accounts of the Palacio del Pardo and they confirmed, according to Núñez Seixas, which "was managed the same as other public properties such as El Pardo".

According to Babío and Pérez Lorenzo, it was confirmed that Franco "did not pay anything" of his private funds, they have not found "any document that proves that he has reimbursed the expenses." There was even a suitcase between Meirás, El Pardo and Casa Civil and in some document "the Pazo de Meirás is listed as a dependency of El Pardo".

"Black Lists" of "Bad Patriots"

The three investigators have also accredited in the courtroom that coercive nature behind the acquisition and that, therefore, it would justify that the Pazo return to the town that was forced to donate to buy it. Thus, they pointed out the existence of "black lists" of "good and bad patriots" that included those who did make contributions.

The mayor of Sada, a town where the Pazo is located, in 1938 confirmed that "threatening tone" of popular opposition by assuring in a document "he would regret putting any Sadense on blacklists" and there is also evidence in the Carballo municipal archive of that the Board ordered the municipalities to send "door to door" to all residents to make subscriptions.

Likewise, they reported that in order to know the acquisition procedure, a report sent by a lieutenant colonel to the National Delegation of Falange Provinces is clarifying, which states that "not the good Spaniards who have contributed to the gift, but all of them, good and bad, as is natural from the latter, the greater nonsense and censorship for those who deserve everything. "

Babío and Pérez Lorenzo also made reference to the document that supported the State's demand in 2019, and that they did not analyze in their book. It is a public deed before a notary in 1938 in which the Junta Pro Pazo acquired Meirás for 406,346.20 pesetas from the heirs of Pardo Bazán. Three years later, Franco signed a contract of sale in public deed between him and the same heirs for 85,000 pesetas. The State maintains that this second operation was "fraudulent", but the Franco family defends its legality.

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  • La Coruña
  • Galicia
  • Francisco Franco Bahamonde
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