Historical memory has become a platform of personal and political protagonism. A path of personal, political and in some cases economic promotion. It is also a tool to justify the current politics of attitude, the struggles and sacrifices of the past, the way in which the current abandonment and renunciation are justified. All through the shameful manipulation of the socio-political memory of the reprised militants.

A “white” and “politically correct” historical memory is thus constructed, concealing the independence, revolutionary, libertarian, red character of the militants in the name of the current “democratic freedoms”, and the “new times”.That is, the militants were killed because of the “autonomy and freedom”, the “peace” that we have today. Their murders are not an incentive to justice and to fight the capitalist, corrupt and oppressive system built by their executioner, but a model of “reconciliation and peace.”

That these militants could not “eat” that they were immersed in a social and national revolution, and that Spanish fascism and capitalism, with the help of the Catholic Church, waged a war to stifle with blood any social or national progress of the Iberian Peoples; that they could not “eat” that the reform of the Kingdom of Spain led to the permanence of sociological Francoism and all its power structures; that they could not “eat” that Francoism carried out numerous crimes of humanity and imposed long decades of state terrorism, and that PEI and the PNAI wanted to “eat” the direct conflict over the Basque organizations.

The militant was killed twice. First on the part of the fascists 80 years ago, and for the second time in years, in the “acts of homage” organized by some in their favor, when the sociopolitical memory of the militant is completely distorted and manipulated.

The militants, in addition to the biological family, have a socio-political family, often the same group in which they were militating. But for the political groups that organize these events, it is essential not to give voice to the sociopolitical family of communist, activist or anarchist militants who “pay homage” to them. To do this, it is very useful for them to give a voice to the relatives of the deceased militant in institutional events (relatives who in many cases may be very distant from the ideology of the deceased), ignore the sociopolitical family, and then do the reading of the ideology of the deceased militant themselves to bring water to the mill of their current ideology and political position. Today, this has happened with José Placer, who was a member of the UAV-ANV in the Cavity.

Some people forget, as if by chance, that the party in which José Placer gave his militancy, the UAV-ANV, is now illegal. So the ideology he defended, which led him to the death penalty at the hands of the fascists in the face of a firing picket by the civil guards, is illegal. This should lead to a deep reflection by those who have organized a tribute in their favor and denounce it. But of course, this “anecdote” is distorted by the symphony of the “new times” of some.

Political families of activists, we have been keeping the socio-political memory of our fallen militants for decades. So I want to talk about two things on this day. One, the warriors of the Basque Force, under the command of José Placer, sang in the Guipúzcoa Shrine at the top of Izarraitz proclaiming their ideology:

“Euskadi libre has been de ser / porque de ello has a reputation / no nos mandan los curas/ ni tampoco las espadas. / With the rifle on the mount / with the thorn in the tasca / Never pierden the humor / so are the Vasca Actions.”

And the other, the commitment of the Historical Party of the Patriotic Left to the war of 36 in the newspaper “Tierra Vasca-Eusko Lur”, dated December 10, 1936:

“Free to drink Euzkadi and dead to drink in our Patria capitalist system, every single one of us –we will not be caught up in the repetiti- of all this and of all the disasters and aggressions...we will always be revolutionaries entusiastas and decididos until all the capitalist system is dismantled, to draw back to the brutal return to the United States of America, the fruits of our lives, the fruits of our lives, the fruits of our lives”.

This is the tribute of remembrance that we want to pay here today to the ideology of José Placer above all the “Blanquerias”, the Historical Memory must be the instrument of the current struggles.

Antxon Gómez Lorente, Alberto Muñoz Zufia and Txarli González Llorente are members of the Basque Earth Foundation.