The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, announced on Friday on his Twitter account that the Francoist coats of arms that still remained at the department’s historic headquarters, in the Palacio de Santa Cruz, have now been removed and replaced by constitutional coats of arms.
The replacement, which has been carried out by workers throughout this week, was described by Albares as “an act of democratic dignity”.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs awarded the contract last May for the work to carry out the change, for an amount of 87,913 euros, after the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory requested in a letter to the previous minister, Arancha González Laya, that, in compliance with the Law of Historical Memory passed in 2007, she proceed to remove the symbols with Francoist connotations from the department’s headquarters.
The coats of arms, which included the eagle of St John, the yoke and arrows and the motto “One, great and free”, were located on two towers of the Palace of Santa Cruz, where they were installed in 1956 when Alberto Martín Artajo was Minister of Foreign Affairs.
