The Valencia Provincial Council will study the project presented by the Platform of Franco victims' families to complete the Paterna Memorial. Amidst Vox's offensive regarding regional and municipal budgets, Vice President Natàlia Enguix received the Platform's president, Amparo Belmonte, to detail the project and explore collaboration avenues for subsidizing necessary elements, such as the identification plaque listing the names of the 2,238 individuals resting in Paterna, many of whom were shot at the ‘Paredón de España’.
The identification plaque for the repressed at the Paterna cemetery is one of the pending elements to finalize the Memorial, a space initially funded by the Generalitat Valenciana. According to Amparo Belmonte, completing the Memorial would also require a sculpture for floral offerings, content for the interpretation center, niche identification systems, and the Memorial's sign with the logos of the involved administrations.
Vice President Enguix expressed the Council's willingness to engage with 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. We will review the project they have presented to study possible collaboration routes," she stated. Enguix emphasized that "this delegation's commitment to democratic memory is beyond doubt, and we ask that other administrations get involved in the same way. We must all work together to dignify a space as important as the Paterna cemetery and its Memorial honoring the victims of Francoism and the Civil War".
For her part, Belmonte indicated that "we can always count on the Democratic Memory delegation of the Council, which is why we have contacted the vice president to try to complete this space of dignity, important for many families, as soon as possible." The president of the Platform explains that the Memorial "is the place where the remains of Francoist victims who could not be identified or who families decide to keep in the Paterna cemetery alongside their comrades are to be interred".
Vice President Enguix had previously offered assistance to Paterna in opening a historical dissemination classroom at the cemetery's Memorial. The provincial official took advantage of her visit to the cemetery in early April, accompanied by deputy Nuria Campos and the Councilor for Citizen Protection, Julio Fernández, to review the exhumation project of trench 34, where the Memory area led by Enguix will invest over 55,000 euros, and to assess the Memorial's status.
Natàlia Enguix recalls that the Council's budget has grown from 356,000 euros in 2016, the year the delegation was created with Jorge Rodríguez as president and Rosa Pérez Garijo as deputy, to approximately 2.2 million euros in the 2026 accounts. The provincial official insists that other administrations should join the Council's commitment to Memory, which "belongs to everyone, is plural and democratic".
Among the delegation of Memory's ongoing projects are workshops in secondary schools, teaching guides, traveling exhibitions, website redesign, acquisition of documentary funds, the 'Memory in Libraries' program, publications, the 'Memory at School' awards, and the María la Jabalina historical research competition. "These initiatives complement subsidies to town councils and associations and investment in exhumations, demonstrating the importance of education in memory," concludes Natàlia Enguix.
