“More than seven decades after the war, 100.000 bodies waiting to be found” (Headline in Spanish digital outlet 20 minutos).
Every other day there is news of another mass grave found in Spain. These findings coincide with a resurgence of the divisions that lead to the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the following for decades of dictatorship under general Franco. As families exhume the bodies of those killed during and after the conflict, and the grandchildren of the victims push for justice, Spaniards have started asking themselves if they made the right decision when they decided to impose forgiveness from the past, instead of confronting it. Explaining what has gone wrong with Spain could help other countries in their transitions and/or dealing with the aftermath of civil conflicts:
Amnesty or Amnesia?
After the death of the general Franco in 1975, Spain left behind four decades of dictatorship and repression to embrace democracy. It neither tried to held the old regime responsible for its actions nor established a Truth Commission to comfort its victims. The Spanish 1977 Amnesty Law, still in place, shielded any Franco era crimes from being put under trial. Victims have never been compensated. Ministers and officials from the Franco Government (1939-1975) were allowed to participate in politics. Monuments honoring the dictator are still standing in cities and town all over the country.
The main reason for burying the past was the fear of reviving the divisions that caused the Spanish Civil War. For a time, it all seems to work as the country developed and economic boom improved the lives of most people. But under the surface, the path chosen by Spain had created a silent resentment that grew over the years within the families of the more than 120.000 leftist that died or disappeared under Franco´s rule. In times of crisis, these old wound have reappeared.
Justice: better late than never?
The relatives of the victims felt that everything could change when in 2007 the socialist government introduced the law of “historical memory”. It recognized the victims of the Franco regime, removed some of the monuments that still honored the dictator and compensated some of the victims. The government started to assist families who wanted to exhume their loves ones from the 2,000 mass graves found. Judge Baltasar Garrison named more than 30 members of Franco regime as instigators of alleged crimes against humanity. But the push for justice stalled when the public prosecutor argued that Spain’s Amnesty Law did not permit the investigation.
The debate that followed stoked ancient hatreds, in part because the two main political parties in the country are historically related to both sides of the conflict, and are willing to use these old wounds for political gains. The standoff raised several questions: is it possible to seek justice for crimes committed decades ago, when most of the perpetrators are dead or very old? Can a country as divided as Spain find justice by itself? Or should it delegate the task on foreign and independent institutions?
Human rights have no boundaries
Last year, the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances decided to intervene in the case of Spain, giving the current Spanish Government 90 days to explain how it is going to help the victims of Franco’s regime. It issued 42 recommendation for “a comprehensive, coherent and permanent state policy” that would allow relatives of those who disappeared to know what happened to them and give proper burials to the victims. What the UN was saying, in other words, is that Spain has failed its victims. As in the case of the Cambodian genocide of the 70´s, the question of outside assistance has been raised.
The comparison with Cambodia may seem exaggerated, but no so in the eyes of Amnesty International. The NGO ranks Spain only second after the Asian country in the number of people disappeared. It was precisely the inability of the Cambodian System to undertake an independent and fair trial that lead to the composition of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), commonly known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. The process, in which a mix of Cambodian and foreign judges tried five aging former communist leaders, has been widely described as a failure. But it some villages I visited while the trial was being televised, something meaningful was happening. When perpetrators of the genocide and victims crossed paths, it wasn’t the former that had to turn around. The shame, in many cases, had started to shift.
Time to stop the circle of hatred
In a recent visit to a university in the South Spain I was struck by how students referred to each other as “fachas” y “rojos”, the terms that defined the right and left sides during the Civil War. Of course none of these students had endured the conflict, but they had inherited the grievances from previous generations. It seemed clear to me that Spain has to do something to brake this vicious circle, and that some kind of assistance from the outside was needed. It might be too late for a trial, but not for a Truth Commission in which independent investigators and historias settle the responsibilities, and give those affected by the war and the Franco regime a final place to rest.