The Spanish Civil War and the Franco Regime

The Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, after a military coup led by General Francisco Franco attempted to overthrow the elected Republican government. In an era when fascist movements were seizing power across Europe, the conflict pitted a conservative Nationalist coalition of landowners, military leaders and the Catholic Church against left-leaning, working- and middle-class Republicans. Franco’s Nationalists received aid from Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, while the Republicans were backed by the Soviet Union, Mexico, and volunteer soldiers from around the world who would become known as the “international brigades.” The war lasted from 1936 and 1939 and claimed some 500,000 lives.

Unlike Germany and Italy’s fascist regimes, which were toppled during World War II, Spain remained under the grip of General Franco’s authoritarian regime from 1939 until the dictator’s death in 1975. The Franco regime, bolstered by the far-right political party Falange Española, the military and the Catholic church, ruled Spain through control of the media, military repression and brutal violence towards dissidents. According to one historian, Franco’s dictatorship stifled political engagement in Spain for generations. Those who did resist the regime—and many who were merely accused of disloyalty—often faced fatal consequences. Accounts of the eastly post-war years describe torture, public humiliation, mass rape, and routine executions of suspected Republicans. After executions, victims’ bodies were dumped in mass graves throughout the countryside; the bodies of an estimated 114,000 “disappeared” Spaniards remain missing.

Sources:

Grocott, Chris. “Review of Antonio Cazorla Sánchez, Fear and Progress: Ordinary Lives in Franco’s Spain, 1939-1975, (review no. 936).” Reviews in History, July 2010, https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/936.

Hochschild, Adam. “Process of Extermination: ‘The Spanish Holocaust,’ by Paul Preston.” New York Times, 11 May 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/books/review/the-spanish-holocaust-by-paul-preston.html.

Taladrid, Stephania. “Spain’s Open Wounds.” The New Yorker, 10 January 2019, www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/spains-open-wounds.

The Transition and the Pact of Forgetting

When General Franco died in 1975, Spain faced many decisions about how to transition to a democracy. Among them, would the perpetrators of crimes against humanity during the 36-year dictatorship be brought to justice through a national process addressing truth, justice, reparation or guarantees of non-repetition (some of the elements of what is known as “transitional justice”)? In 1977, nearly all political parties agreed that the best way to move forward was to avoid looking back on the regime. These politicians agreed that Spaniards could only move forward by forging a national “Pact of Forgetting” that would allow perpetrators and victims to live together peaceably without “reopening old wounds.”

This willful collective amnesia was solidified following the 1977 Amnesty Law, which was passed by Spain’s first democratically elected Parliament in forty years. This law established amnesty not only for political prisoners but for all to all those who committed crimes during the Civil War and Franco dictatorship, shielding perpetrators from prosecution. The Amnesty Law contradicted several international treaties, treaties, which would later be ratified by Spain, that guarantee victims of human rights violations the right to legal recourse (these violations include political imprisonment, torture and execution, and child abuse).

Sources:

Ackar, Kadribasic. “Transitional Justice in Democratization Processes: The Case of Spain from an International Point of View,” International Journal of Rule of Law, Transitional Justice and Human Rights, 2010, p.125, https://books.google.com/books?id=_hp7nOXOBuIC&pg=PA132.

Hahn, Jonah. “Franco’s Forgotten Crimes.” Jacobin Magazine, 13 January 2019, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/01/auschwitz-holocaust-madrid-franco-civil-war.

Taladrid, Stephania. “Spain’s Open Wounds.” The New Yorker, 10 January 2019, www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/spains-open-wounds.

Contesting Historical Memory

The 1977 Amnesty Law and its consequent “Pact of Forgetting” meant that, for decades, the Franco regime’s crimes were not subject to public debate, and to this day no perpetrator has been held accountable in Spanish courts. The public history of the 36-year regime was sanitized: human rights violations were omitted from school curricula, which helped perpetuate the narrative that both sides committed equivalent crimes and that the winners of the war (Franco and his supporters) were on the righteous side of history.

One of the most visible symbols of how historical memory is contested in Spain is the Valley of the Fallen, a gigantic monument outside of Madrid commissioned by Franco, which features a 150m cross (for comparison, this is taller than the Statue of Liberty). It was theoretically built in 1940 as a “national act of atonement” that would reconcile the crimes committed by both sides during the Civil War. To symbolize national unity, Franco removed the bodies of 33,847 victims from mass graves, without the consent or knowledge of their families, and reburied them anonymously in the Valley of the Fallen. The bodies of Nationalist soldiers were also interred in the monument, but they arrived in coffins inscribed with their names and the word “martyr.” Franco’s own body and that of the fascist Falange party founder José Antonio Primo de Rivera, who was executed in 1936, were buried in the central basilica in ornate tombs. Critics of the monument claim that it glorifies Franco and celebrates the Nationalist cause, and that it was constructed by political prisoners through forced labor. In October 2019, Spain’s government exhumed Franco’s body from the basilica and moved it to a regular cemetery to be buried with his wife and family.

Today, Spain lacks a state-sponsored museum explaining the history of the Civil War and the Franco regime, and some believe that the Valley of the Fallen should be converted into a memorial that reckons squarely with the regime’s crimes.

Sources:

Ackar, Kadribasic. “Transitional Justice in Democratization Processes: The Case of Spain from an International Point of View,” International Journal of Rule of Law, Transitional Justice and Human Rights, 2010, p.125, https://books.google.com/books?id=_hp7nOXOBuIC&pg=PA132.

Hahn, Jonah. “Franco’s Forgotten Crimes.” Jacobin Magazine, 13 January 2019, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/01/auschwitz-holocaust-madrid-franco-civil-war.

Palmer, Alex W. “The Battle Over the Memory of the Spanish Civil War.”Smithsonian Magazine, July 2018, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/battle-memory-spanish-civil-war-180969338/.

Preston, Paul. “Spain feels Franco’s legacy 40 years after his death.” BBC.com, 20 November 2015, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34844939.

Strange, Hannah. “The Politics of a Long-Dead Dictator Still Haunt Spain.” The Atlantic, 14 October 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/10/franco-exhumation-spain/572929/.

The Franco Regime on Trial

The victims of Franco’s regime and their families have been fighting for justice for decades, both quietly and in an increasingly public movement. Many, like María Martín López, request nothing more than to reclaim their relatives’ remains for a proper burial. The first formal effort by Spain’s government to respond to these claims was in 2007, when Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero helped pass a Historical Memory Law. The law denounced the Franco regime, provided some possible aid for identification and exhumation of mass graves, offered token compensation to some of the relatives of people killed or tortured, and called for the renaming of streets in Spain named after Francoist leaders. However, many victims’ groups saw this law as insufficient and asserted that it is the State that must take responsibility for exhumations, not civil society.

Some have used activism, advocacy and the Spanish and international judicial systems to seek justice. Some families began to undertake limited exhumations in the early years of democracy (https://elpais.com/politica/2012/04/07/actualidad/1333834735_777733.html). Starting around 2000, historical memory associations began to form, the most prominent being The Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH), to investigate long-buried crimes and to advocate for justice on behalf of victims, with particular focus on pursuing exhumations. To date, these organizations, often with the help of families and volunteers have recovered over 8000 bodies from mass graves.

In 2008, Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón raised a direct challenge to the Pact of Forgetting when he ordered an investigation into Franco-era deeds “that could qualify as crimes against humanity.” He acknowledged that the dictator and his collaborators were responsible for “mass killings, torture and the systemic, general and illegal detentions of political opponents.” Although Spanish statutes of limitations forbid prosecution of crimes committed more than 20 years earlier, Judge Garzón declared that because bodies had not been found, the murders of over 114,000 people by the Franco regime were still open to investigation.

The surviving family of two brothers who were executed by the Franco regime, Manuel and Antonio Lapeña, filed a lawsuit in 2012 to remove their relatives’ remains from the Valley of the Fallen for reburial. The Spanish criminal court initially rejected the case due to the Amnesty Law, but the family re-filed citing a civil law that gave family members the right reclaim their deceased relatives’ property. The case made its way through local and national courts in Spain and beyond, including the European Court of Human Rights. In May 2016 a judge ruled that the Lapeñas had the right to receive their relatives’ remains, and ordered DNA tests to identify the bodies in the Valley’s mass grave. However, the case stirred controversy in Spain, especially in the Catholic Church, who objected that to exhume the bodies would disturb the remains of other victims.

Under the principle of universal jurisdiction, any country’s national court can prosecute an individual for serious international crimes. It is often invoked as a last resort when other legal options are not available. In 2010, several people, alongside civil society organizations in Argentina and Spain, filed an international lawsuit against Franco-era perpetrators in a Buenos Aires criminal court. (This lawsuit is the subject of The Silence of Others). In 2012 a platform/network of organizations was created (CeAQUA) to support the lawsuit and to collaborate with the two lawyers leading the case in Spain, the late Carlos Slepoy (who had been part of the team behind Pinochet’s detention) and Ana Messuti. Over the course of several years, the Argentine judge involved in the case, María Romilda Servini de Cubría, has issued arrest warrants for several living perpetrators including alleged torturers, former cabinet members and doctors implicated in cases of stolen children, but Spanish courts have refused to either extradite the indicted or judge them in Spain.

In recent years, Spain’s political tides have perhaps been turning. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who assumed power in 2018, promised to pursue justice for Franco’s victims by expanding the Historical Memory Law of 2007. Shortly after his inauguration, the Sánchez administration announced its intent to open up thousands of mass graves across Spain and to support a truth commission. Their later proposals, however, didn’t implement these proposals and they have refused to allow the extraditions requested by Judge Servini. In September 2018 Parliament approved Sánchez’s plans to exhume Franco’s remains from the Valley of the Fallen, as a step towards transforming the monument into a site that honors Franco’s victims and acknowledges his regime’s atrocities. In September 2019, Spain’s Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the exhumation could move forward, and in October 2019 the exhumation took place.

Right-wing parties and the Catholic Church fiercely oppose efforts to modify the monument;

many victims’ groups point out that even if Franco’s body is successfully exhumed, there will remain thousands of mass graves waiting to be exhumed, thousands of people who were tortured and whose torturers have never been investigated, thousands of possible cases of stolen children, and a myriad of other crimes to be investigated and reparations to be made. Ultimately, Spaniards are still divided about how best to acknowledge and remedy the crimes of the Franco regime.

Sources:

Hahn, Jonah. “Franco’s Forgotten Crimes.” Jacobin Magazine, 13 January 2019, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/01/auschwitz-holocaust-madrid-franco-civil-war.

Nash, Elizabeth. “Spanish 'memory law' reopens deep wounds of Franco era.” The Independent, 10 October 2007, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/spanish-memory-law-reopens-deep-wounds-of-franco-era-394552.html.

Palmer, Alex W. “The Battle Over the Memory of the Spanish Civil War.”Smithsonian Magazine, July 2018, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/battle-memory-spanish-civil-war-180969338/.

Strange, Hannah. “The Politics of a Long-Dead Dictator Still Haunt Spain.” The Atlantic, 14 October 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/10/franco-exhumation-spain/572929/.

Taladrid, Stephania. “Spain’s Open Wounds.” The New Yorker, 10 January 2019, www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/spains-open-wounds.

Tremlett, Giles. “Franco repression ruled as a crime against humanity.” The Guardian, 16 October 2008, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/oct/17/spain