Spanish Government Rescinds Award Granted to Franco-Era Psychiatrist Vallejo Nájera

The Council of Ministers plans to approve a decree at its meeting on July 7 to strip the 'Grand Cross of Health' (Gran Cruz de Sanidad) awarded posthumously to military psychiatrist Antonio Vallejo Nájera Lobón. It has been decided that the doctor, who was awarded this medal during the Francisco Franco dictatorship, will be deprived of this honor sixty years later by the government led by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. Prime Minister Sánchez stated that no democracy can continue to extol a person who masks their theories to justify hatred, oppression, and inequality, emphasizing that such behavior is historically and morally irresponsible. This decision is seen as part of the process of strengthening democratic memory and historical reckoning in Spain.

This significant step was announced to the public via a video shared on Sánchez's social media account and was described as a historical reckoning. In the video message, it was strongly criticized that in the 21st century, someone holding regressive and discriminatory views—such as the belief that women's intelligence is underdeveloped and their sole duty is to bear children for the fatherland—should continue to hold the state's highest decorations. The government aims to rectify past injustices and defend democratic values with such decisions. This situation has reignited debates in Spanish society about facing the past.

The legal basis for the decision is the Democratic Memory Law passed in Spain, which previously enabled the revocation of awards of Franco regime symbol figure police officer Antonio González Pacheco (Billy el Niço). Vallejo Nájera is also a recognized figure as the grandfather of celebrity chef Samantha Vallejo-Nájera and the father of famous psychiatrist Juan Antonio Vallejo-Nájera. He started his career as the first full-time ordinary professor of Psychiatry at the University of Valladolid. However, his academic work and research went down in history due to his controversial approach of using medicine for ideological purposes.

Vallejo Nájera's research and theories were based on his deviant belief that there was a link between Marxism and mental deficiency, shaping his theories around a concept he termed the 'red gene'. According to his own theory, he argued that parents with left-wing views passed on an inheritance of ideological degeneration to their children and used these views to advance his career during the Franco regime. With the pseudo-scientific categories he invented, he ensured that people were labeled as mentally ill solely due to their thought structures, political preferences, or social characteristics. For this reason, he went down in history as the 'Spanish Mengele' or 'Mengele of Franco psychiatry', and his work has been a great source of shame for the medical world.

The Minister of Health fully supported Prime Minister Sánchez's decision, stating that Vallejo Nájera used his medical and psychiatric knowledge as a tool to legitimize policies of oppression, cruelty, and social control during the dictatorship. Accordingly, it was expressed that the doctor's legacy is completely incompatible with the fundamental principles of modern psychiatry such as solidarity, human rights, and individual autonomy, but rather based on an exclusionary and stigmatizing biological reductionism. Experts also emphasize that these theories fortunately did not have a lasting and negative impact on Spanish psychiatry, but they are a clear example of the abuse of medicine for ideological purposes. This decision serves as a historical warning for future generations.