Argentona has a street with two names. It’s not that the road changes its name because of its length. Passeig de la República has exactly the same location as Passeig del Baró de Viver. It goes without saying that this makes the delivery people who have to deliver a package to a neighbor who lives there in a hurry. But this is not the reason that has led the Heritage councilor to put an end to this duplicity and that he has opened the box of thrones in the Maresmenc municipality.
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In 2018, at the height of the Process, the council, governed by Eudald Calvo’s CUP, approved with the votes in favor of ERC and ICV and a non-attached councillor, to change the name of Paseo del Baró de Viver to Paseo de la República, but keeping three signs with the first name. The change was made without informing the neighbors, who, despite the surprise, didn’t cry out. Only two of them filed an appeal, which the council never answered. Seven years later, the brother of the ex-mayor and councilor for Heritage, Bernat Calvo, loved the appeal and recently called a hearing with the residents. Without resolving these appeals, the plenum’s agreement could not be validated. “It was our obligation”, he assures in statements to the ARA, without hiding that he is in favor of restoring the original name.
The residents, who have all this time suffered problems when doing administrative procedures, have seconded the change. The result has been that 77 residents have supported restoring the original name and only 6 have defended keeping the current one. “The numbers are too strong to ignore them. If the result had been adjusted, we would not change the denomination”, he makes clear. And he confesses that “it is not a rejection of the Republic, but of how the change was made”. The underlying debate is, however, which baron de Viver is referring to. The councilor defends that it can only be the first, Darius Romeu i Torrents (1849-1905), a liberal politician who was president of the Provincial Council of Barcelona. “The name of the street was given in 1901 and, therefore, it has no connection either with the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera or with Francoism,” Calvo points out, to differentiate him from the second baron, who did collaborate with the uprising and the fascist regime. And it proves that the first democratic council of 1979 did not remove it from the nomenclature.
The ANC and the Council of the Republic, which will bring to the next plenary session – where the restitution must be validated – a motion to reverse it, do not see it the same. The two entities consider that the Franco regime only recovered names related to the regime and refer to the decision adopted by the Falangists when they occupied the City Hall at gunpoint: “Replace the nomenclature of the squares and streets of this town that glorify personalities or events incompatible with the Glorious National Movement with names consistent with its ideological program.Thus, the coup plotters changed the name of Carrer Gran to Avenida del Caudillo, from Prat de la Riba to 19 de Julio (day of the uprising), from Fermín Galan to José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of Falange Española and son of the dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera, and from Pi i Margall to Barón de Viver, among others that had been established by the republicans.
“Legacy of Francoism”
In any case, the two associations conclude that restoring the name of Paseo del Baró de Viver is, in the words of secretary Albert Vila, “an imposition and a legacy of Francoism”. “Whether it refers to the first or second Baron de Viver is indifferent, it does not matter at all,” he adds. The same entities emphasize that if the coup d’état supported by Baron de Viver had not taken place, or if the republicans had won the war, the promenade would most likely still be called Pi i Margall. And in any case, remember that the Barony of Viver is a monarchical title and “the Bourbon monarchy is the continuation of Francoism”. Calvo defends that the sign will say that it refers to the first baron. For the entities, adding the year of birth and death to the plaque is “whitewashing” Francoism and resignifying it would be to explain that it was the Falangists who imposed this name.
Calvo has already stated that they intend to relocate the name of this promenade to another area of the town and that it will not disappear from the municipal nomenclature. “I will propose that it be Carrer de l’Ajuntament or the new square that will be built at the entrance to the town, through which everyone enters, and there will be no conflicts with any neighbors,” the councilor points out. “It is not about putting the name Republic in a dignified place, but rather that Argentona does not accept the name imposed by the Falangists and which honors a fascist who benefited from the two dictatorships,” the associations counter. They also do not understand that such an important decision has not been open to all the inhabitants after denouncing that one of the appeals was presented by a well-known Spanish supporter or that the City Council, which has remained neutral, has not done pedagogy among the residents.
