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Speech given at the Common
Grave in Oviedo on the Day of the Spanish Republic in 1996, Today, on the 65th anniversary of the proclamation of the Spanish Republic, we meet here to pay tribute and our respects before one of the graves of our best men and women. They took away your lives, but never will they take away this permanently renewed love that we feel for you, and for everything that you mean to us. They tried in vain to kill ideals: the ideals that you defended at the highest level. They could not make it, and those ideals fought against the foes of Freedom, Justice and Solidarity in the battlefields of our Europe, and THEY WON , and YOU WON. Your fight was the seed that would bear fruit in that VICTORY, which will be forever printed in the most beautiful pages of History, to increase the shame of your enemies. They wanted to blot you out of our minds, and they achieved just the opposite effect: Today our youngsters remember and admire you, because they know that oblivion is just a form of cowardice, and an indirect form of complicity. They will never make us forget, because following your example as we do, we are neither cowards nor accomplices. And today, and forever, we proclaim that fond memories will always overcome your absence in our minds. And all together we shout, in your name: GLORY TO OUR HEROES, who gave their lives to defend SOLIDARITY, JUSTICE and FREEDOM, and who will always live in the great page of HISTORY. Comrades, friends, shout with me... LONG LIVE THE SPANISH REPUBLIC !!
Eusebio Ruiz, 1996 |