The president of the Region of Murcia, Fernando López Miras, announced on Twitter this week that the International Airport of the Region of Murcia, located in Corvera, will bear the name of Juan de la Cierva.
López Miras said that “the legacy and figure of this illustrious Murcian inventor will be forever linked to the area.” He said that the initiative will be approved this week in the Governing Council.
The Ministry of Transport informed the regional government a year ago that the name of the Murcian aerodrome was not suitable due to incompatibility with the Historical Memory Law based on a report, provided by the historian Ángel Viñas, who placed the inventor among the participants in the 1936 coup.
However, the Government of the Region of Murcia has responded with two of it’s own studies that say it is “unfounded” that the Murcian inventor supported the military uprising, the Civil War or the subsequent dictatorship.
See also: What’s in a name?
These new reports by the historian Villa and Professor Guillamón have been sent to the Ministry of Transport and have been published in the Transparency Portal of the Region of Murcia and on the website of the Government of the Region of Murcia.
The documents show that the beliefs of the engineer “do not contravene the spirit” of the Historical Memory Law, according to the Government of the Region of Murcia
The Community has made public the reports of the Professor of Political History at the Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid, Roberto Villa, and the Professor of Modern History at the University of Murcia, Francisco Javier Guillamón, on Juan de la Cierva, which highlight his exceptional contribution in the world of aeronautics.
The documents are accessible on the website of the Community and on the Portal of Transparency of the Region of Murcia.
The Minister of Public Works and Infrastructures, José Ramón Díez de Revenga, said that the historians conclude that engineer Juan de la Cierva “has never provoked confrontation, offense or grievance or exaltation among those in conflict; on the contrary, the inventor of the autogyro has always been a meeting point, without his ideas arousing controversy, neither in the context of the Civil War nor in the most recent history of Spain”.
Díez de Revenga underlined Villa and Guillamón’s arguments about the international relevance of aeronautical engineering, and argues that “it is for these achievements that Juan de la Cierva is honoured, in addition to his status as a Murcian and for being the first person who publicly proposed the construction of a commercial airport in the Region of Murcia”.
