In Murcia, the regional government says it is going to court to contest the Civil Aviation Authority’s decision not to allow the international airport at Corvera to be named after the aviator and inventor Juan de la Cierva. He was an aeronautical engineer who invented the ‘autogiro’, an aircraft in which lift is provided by a freely rotating rotor and which served as the forerunner of the helicopter. A spokesman for the Murcia government said this had been a unilateral and subjective decision, and evidence “of the sectarianism with which Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez treats the Murcia region”, and he insisted that De la Cierva’s contribution to the aviation industry should be treated separately from his association with fascism. De la Cierva, a controversial figure, has been described as a collaborator of Franco, and it has been said that without him, it’s possible that there would have been no Spanish Civil War.
