Thursday, September 14, 2017

Rewriting History

A group called the Hermandad Provincial de Caballeros Legionarios, the provincial brotherhood of the Gentlemen of the Legión Española - the crack Spanish force with their barracks in Viator outside Almería - has an exhibition going on at the Patio de Luces in the Diputación de Almería building in the provincial capital.
Not many people will be queuing up to see it perhaps, although it is said to be a pretty good exhibition of photographs and pictures of the Spanish Legion.
Turns out though, there's a problem. the revisionist parties in the City Hall don't like the people who founded the Legion in 1920, some 16 years before the Civil War. One of the two involved in creating the legion was General José Millán-Astray, who was as mad as a hatter. Millán-Astrey once lost his arm in a battle in the Rif. It was blown clean off his elbow. He is said to have picked it up and hurled it at the enemy. No doubt impressed, they gave up. What a guy, eh? The socialists and those further to the left are trying to have the truculent general erased from the history books (without, we hope, offending the Legion). They are removing his street signs and the odd statue glaring at the passers by under the customary load of pigeon-shit.
The man in the photo isn't Millan-Astray though -  it's a man the lefties hate even more even though the picture comes from long before he left his mark. This is a young General Franco.
As the empty rhetoric continues, here's the Brotherhood's take: 'The exhibition at the Patio de Luces attempts to show some brushstrokes on the history of the Legión and the photo to which the PSOE alludes does not include the figure of Francisco Franco in his years as the Caudillo, but as one of the figures of the founders of this glorious body, many years before'. Izquierda Unida meanwhile says 'We want to formally complain regarding the presence of well-known fascists presiding over an exhibition dedicated to the Legión and installed in the Diputación de Almería'. So silly.

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