Prominent Partido Popular politicians showing support for the monument. | Joan Torres

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The Partido Popular's spokesperson in Palma, Marga Durán, has suggested that the three parties which run the town hall - PSOE, Més and and Som Palma (Podemos) - should pay for the demolition of the Sa Feixina monument and not expect the public to pay.

At a Friday gathering in support of the monument, attended by ex-president José Ramón Bauzá, and three former PP mayors, Mateo Isern, Joan Fageda and Catalina Cirer, Durán noted that the 170,000 euros cost for the demolition could be met almost in totality from the 50,000 euros annual contributions to political parties from the town hall. She said that the demolition was being done on "a whim". There is, she suggested, only a political motive for it.

Durán also pointed to the support for the monument from Arca, the association for old urban centres, and the Salvem Sa Feixina group, as well as to the national culture ministry's demand that the town hall desists in demolishing the monument until it has made a pronouncement on it.

Former mayors referred to ways in which the Francoist symbolism of the monument had been downplayed and they stressed in particular the move by a former PSOE mayor, Aina Calvo, to adapt the monument to the law of historic memory through a "perfect solution", which was to make it a monument honouring all victims of war. Mateo Isern noted that José Hila, the current mayor, had agreed with the Calvo solution.

Joan Fageda, in saying that the demolition was being promoted through "resentment" of what had already been achieved in ridding it of Francoist symbolism, made a further suggestion: that the demolition should be subject to a referendum, just as the terraces on the Born avenue had been.