The vice-president of the València Provincial Council, Natàlia Enguix, received the president of the Platform of victims' families, Amparo Belmonte, to learn in detail about the project to complete the Paterna Memorial. The aim is to explore possible collaboration channels to subsidize essential elements, such as the identification plaque with the names of the 2,238 repressed individuals, many of whom were shot at the site known as the ‘Paredón de España’.
The identification plaque for the repressed individuals at the Paterna cemetery is one of the first pending elements to complete the Memorial, a space already built with funds from the Generalitat Valenciana. According to Amparo Belmonte, to finalize the installation, a sculpture for floral tributes, content for the interpretation center, niche identification systems, and the Memorial's plaque with the logos of the involved administrations would also be necessary.
Vice-president Enguix expressed the Provincial Council's willingness to get involved in the project. “We have met to help them complete the Memorial. We have always collaborated with all family associations, and the intention is to continue doing so,” she stated. “We will review the project they have presented to study possible collaboration avenues. The commitment of this delegation to democratic memory is beyond doubt, and we ask that other administrations get involved in the same way,” she added, emphasizing the need to work “hand in hand to dignify a space as important as the Paterna cemetery”.
For her part, Amparo Belmonte acknowledged that “we can always count on the Democratic Memory delegation of the Provincial Council.” She explained that the Memorial is the intended site for the remains of victims of Francoism who could not be identified or whose families decide they should remain there, alongside other comrades with whom they were buried.
The Provincial Council had previously offered assistance to Paterna to open a historical dissemination classroom at the Memorial. In early April, Enguix, accompanied by deputy Nuria Campos and councilor Julio Fernández, visited the cemetery to review the exhumation project of trench 34, for which the Memory area will invest over 55,000 euros. Regarding the budget for Democratic Memory, Natàlia Enguix noted the increase from 356,000 euros in 2016 to approximately 2.2 million euros in the 2026 accounts, and reiterated the need for other administrations to join this commitment to memory, which she described as “plural and democratic”.
Among the delegation's current memory projects are workshops in secondary schools, teaching guides, traveling exhibitions, website redesign, acquisition of documentary funds and dissemination materials, the 'Memory in Libraries' program, publications, awards, and a historical research competition. “These initiatives complement subsidies to municipalities and associations and investment in exhumations, demonstrating the importance of education in memory,” concluded Natàlia Enguix.
