Spanish Government Popular Party in Toledo prefers Franco to Mandela

Popular Party votes against renaming “18 July street” “Nelson Mandela street”. Last July Toledo's city council approved a measure proposed by the Izquierda Unida councillors renaming a street “Nelson Mandela”, from “18 July”, the date on which General Franco rose in a coup d'etat against Spain's legitimate government in 1936.

The proposal received the support of the majority PSOE councillors and so passed. However, according to the Público newspaper, the PP councillors voted against the proposal. The vote was made to coincide with Mandela’s 95th birthday, and it also coincided with the 77th anniversary of Franco’s coup d’etat.

In Toledo there is a street, near what is still “18 July” street, called “División Azul”, or Blue Division, a Spanish unit that served with the Nazis on the Eastern Front during WWII.