From Tuesday, Avinguda Joan March in Palma will cease to be known by this name. It will become Avinguda Gran i General Consell, which was the name of the main governing institution in Mallorca at the time of the Kingdom of Mallorca.
Joan March is often referred to as Franco's banker. His association with the dictator and the regime is the reason for the name change. The town hall is changing the names of twelve roads and streets in all, these changes being in accordance with the regional government's law of democratic memory and recognition.
The cost of changing signs will be 40,000 euros. Work on this has already started and will be completed within a week. Residents will not have to carry out any administrative procedures; these will be done automatically.
Mayor José Hila stressed on Monday that "all of us here will never agree with fascists, which is why we continue to change street names and to open graves and identify bodies so that we can return them to the families".
Hila was accompanied at a presentation of the street name changes by the councillors for education and citizen participation, Llorenç Carrió and Alberto Jarabo, and the regional secretary for democratic memory, Jesús Jurado.
Carrió said that "the Civil War and the dictatorship were black pages in our history". "The changes in the names of the streets will not make them forgotten but they will no longer be exalted".
Some 1,800 people in Mallorca died at the hands of the fascists. For Jurado, "erasing Franco's heritage from our streets and from our society is not only a legal obligation, it is also a moral obligation towards the victims".
The other eleven streets, which include squares, are:
Plaça Almirall Churruca - renamed Plaça de Mateus Pruner (a current-day cartographer).
Carrer Almirall Gravina - Angelí i Dulcert (a 14th century cartographer).
Carrer Almirall Cervera - Pere Rosell (a 15th century cartographer).
Carrer Toledo - Rafael Valls (a crypto-Jew from the 17th century).
Passatge Castillo Olite - Francesca Vidal (a trade unionist 1851-1939).
Carrer Josep d'Oleza - Marc Ferragut (cultural promoter 1901-1981; he founded Palma Auditorium).
Carrer Alfambra - Joan Daurer (a 14th century painter).
Carrer Brunete - Joan Desí (a 15th-16th century painter).
Plaça Bisbe Planas - Plaça del Poble.
Carrer Gabriel Rabassa Street - Frederica Montseny (politician and writer 1905-1994).
Carrer del Canonge Antoni Sancho - Aina Moll (philologist 1930-2019).