Question 14743 — foreign policy

Summary

Mr. Hadrien Clouet questions the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs about the incomprehensible retention of the fascist leader Francisco Franco within the national order of the Legion of Honor. Indeed, this executioner was named Officer of the Legion of Honor (without going through the rank of knight) by Philippe Pétain on February 22, 1928, then promoted to the rank of Commander by the same on October 26, 1930. It is a triple shame: for the country which handed it over, for the Republic which suffers the legacy of Pétain's decisions and for the other holders who are associated with this fascist criminal. The factious Franco overthrew the Spanish Republic to impose, after three years of civil war, a fascist clerical-military dictatorship from 1939 to 1975, which crushed the country. First banned from Europe, it was reinstated under pressure from the United States of America and the Vatican in the 1950s. His crimes remain largely unknown, as evidenced by the first exhibition dedicated to the Franco regime in 2025 at the Departmental Museum of Resistance and Deportation in Toulouse. After the civil war which cost the lives of 500,000 people, the Franco regime carried out massive and savage repression in order to eradicate the entire Spanish left. Spain still has no official census of those missing under the dictatorship. However, the human toll of the Franco regime is estimated at more than 200,000 missing people, including 4,300 mass graves counted. For women: systematic torture including rape, hair clipping, public exposure, etc. The children were taken from their families of origin and assigned to Francoist families. In 1940, more than 500,000 republicans were interned in concentration camps, 300,000 in prison, 140,000 subjected to forced labor and another half a million fled the regime. Following the Nazi model, medical experiments were carried out on Marxist activists taken as guinea pigs. During World War II, he supported Hitler-Mussolini maneuvers and sent troops against the Soviet Union. Following the Liberation, the worst Nazi criminals were welcomed and sheltered by Francoist Spain, which removed from justice. In addition to fierce repression, Francoism mass indoctrinated young people with ultra-conservative school programs. Furthermore, it caused a serious economic crisis. The autarkic interruption of the purchase of fertilizer caused the death of more than 200,000 Spaniards from hunger between 1939 and 1952. The country stagnated throughout this period. It was in order to save Franco that the United States opened access to him to the Marshall Plan. Franco of course also benefited from the support of large multinationals, which invested in a country without union activity (punishable by death) and profited from the forced labor of political prisoners. These crimes are today subject to deep negationism, carried by the reactionary media, offices close to Opus Dei or the Francisco Franco National Foundation and fascist parties such as Vox. This It was only in 2007 that political convictions under Franco were overturned. Thus, the MP expects the Government to proceed without delay with the removal of this shameful Legion of Honor. If the Council of State did not respond on January 29, 2024 to the request of a descendant of Spanish refugees who had contacted it, a political decision is necessary. For this, it would be necessary to modify article R. 97 of the code of the Legion of Honor to authorize the post-mortem disenfranchisement of a criminal; an absolutely consensual modification, undoubtedly excluding the 139 fascist sympathizers who sit in the National Assembly. This act would salute and complete the defranquisation process underway in Spain, such as the withdrawal of Franco's honors and titles or the emptied mausoleum. He wants to know his position on this subject.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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