crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
4.1. Purpose
The explicit purpose of the law was to give full and definitive (sic) response to the demands of those
citizens who had suffered the consequences of civil war and dictatorship. It aimed also to honour and
redeem permanently all those who directly suffered the injustices and offences committed for different
political or ideological reasons or due to religious beliefs. It must be underlined that the law aimed at
closing the process of transitional justice and, because of this perception, some NGOs denounced it
as a ‘Law of Final Point’. 7 It must be also noticed that the law included within its scope a reference
to religious belief: this was a demand of the Catalan Nationalist CiU who wanted the law to cover the
excesses against priest and nuns in the Republican side.
4.2. Contents of the law
1. Recognition: the law established the right of all citizens to moral reparation and the recovery of
their personal and family memory (a wording that places this within the private domain rather than as
a public objective). Sentences, sanctions etc, of the Francoist repressive tribunals are recognised and
declared as radically unjust, as well as the exile that in many cases was the only option for Republicans.
From this follows the right of victims to obtain an official Declaration of reparation and recognition.
Some of the initial drafts foresaw a Commission of Notables who would be in charge of issuing these
declarations, 8 being this one of the most criticised aspects of the law.
2. Illegitimacy of sentences: all sentences and trials of the Francoist repressive courts are declared
illegitimate and the laws that created them are expelled from the legal order with the effect that no
administrative authority can claim them. This was one of the most contentious points, with some experts
demanding the adoption of the model of the 1998 German Law of suppression of unjust sentences of
Nazism. For the suppression to be effective, the same author argued, a list of unjust dispositions and
judicial or other organs who applied them was required. 9
3. Improvement of benefits already recognised: these were also extended to the citizens who died
defending democracy between 1 January 1968 and 6 October 1977. Other additional benefits for specific
collectives were the recognition of the possibility for International Brigades volunteers to obtain Spanish
nationality without renouncing to their own. Also, the Victims Associations had their role recognised
and eventually, the authorities could grant those honours.
4. Measures for identification and location of victims: one of the driving forces behind the process
was the deep impact and effect on public opinion that had the spontaneous but growing actions (either
by families or NGOs) for exhumation and recovering the remains of persons killed by the Francoist
repression. These actions moved in a semi a-legality: no norm regulated them and families and
associations requested permission to authorities to proceed. Normally, no response was provided, so
actions were carried through without opposition, without authorisation and without economic support.
Through the law, the authorities commit themselves to somehow participate in processes of exhumation
and identification of victims. Although the wording is unclear, it seems that the leading role belongs to
families of victims and NGOs.
5. Symbolic policy: the law proposed, along former initiatives, the removal of signs and symbols
that glorify the military uprising, the Civil War or Dictatorship. Private commemorations with no
glorification purposes and signs and symbols with artistic or architectonic-religious value are excluded.
The most important among these symbols is the so-called Valley of the Fallen, a mastodontic basilica
and monument built by Franco and in which he himself and the founder of the Spanish fascist party, the
Falange, are buried. Public funds sustain both the monument and the church and Republican prisoners
worked in its construction. For some, the Valley was itself a symbol of reconciliation (sic), since
deaths from both sides were buried there and it had historical value. 10 For others, its re-conversion was
unavoidable. 11
6. Memory related measures: these measures revolved around the existing institution in the city of
Salamanca, which will become a Historical Memory Documentary Centre and General Archive of the
7
For instance, Amnesty International, El Mundo, 22 October 2007.
8
Some victims claimed that the Declaration was the same as a humiliating “certificate of good conduct”, Sempere, op. cit.
9
Joan J. Queralt, “Desmemoria histórica”, El País, 5 January 2007, p. 26
10
See Juan A. Mayor de la Torre, “La verdad del Valle”, El País, 8 May 2005.
11
Paloma Agui, “Una reconversión inevitable”, El País, 8 May 2005.
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