Digging up Spain's past: Consequences of truth and reconciliation

Democratization

Volumn 12, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 44-59

  Blakeley, Georgina ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF HUDDERSFIELD   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Civil society; Democratization; Historical memory; Spain; Transitional justice

Indexed keywords

CIVIL WAR; DEMOCRATIZATION; HUMAN RIGHTS; POLITICAL HISTORY;

EASTERN HEMISPHERE; EURASIA; EUROPE; SOUTHERN EUROPE; SPAIN; WORLD;

EID: 13344260673     PISSN: 13510347     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/1351034042000317952     Document Type: Article

References (68)

1. This analysis follows the convention of dividing the process of democratization into at least two analytically distinct stages, namely, the transition to democracy and the consolidation of democracy (see Dankwart Rustow 'Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model', Comparative Politics, Vol.2, No.3 (1970), pp.337-65).
2. Second, the definition of civil society used is that put forward by Rueschemeyer et al., who write 'Civil society ... is the totality of social institutions and associations, both formal and informal, that are not strictly production-related and governmental or familial in character', in Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens and John D. Stephens Capitalist Development and Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), p.39. In other words, civil society refers to that intermediate sphere between the state and private realm of the family in which citizens associate voluntarily and organize independently to manage their own affairs.
3. In this regard, the Spanish case does not fit very well into much of the literature on transitional justice. That tends to examine cases that occur mainly during the phase of democratization we would label the transition process. Spain fits better with cases of consolidated democracies such as Germany or France, where memories of their respective roles in the Second World War remained marginalized for more than 50 years until widespread public deliberation was sparked off by, in the former, the publication of a controversial book, Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1996) and, in the latter, the trial of a French collaborator with the Nazis, the ex-Vichy official Maurice Papon.
4. Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p.18.
5. Ibid., p.6.
6. Ibid., pp.17-18.
7. Alexandra Barahona de Brito, Carmen Gonzaléz Enríquez and Paloma Aguilar (eds), The Politics of Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p.22.
8. Ibid., p.22.
9. Stephanie R. Golob '"Forced to be Free": Globalized Justice, Pacted Democracy, and the Pinochet Case', Democratization, Vol.9, No.2 (2002), pp.25-9.
10. Stephanie R. Golob, 'The Pinochet Case: "Forced to be Free" Abroad and at Home', Democratization, Vol.9, No.4 (2002), p.33.
11. In a clear reference to the efforts of Spain's national court to bring to justice various members of the Argentine and Chilean militaries, Felipe González remarked on the reticence he felt on being asked to comment on the democratization processes of Latin American countries. González commented that he felt embarrassment on seeing some Spaniards presuming to give lessons on democracy to these countries and demanding from them what they have not dared to demand of their own country. Felipe González, 'Chile, Argentina y las Comisiones de la Verdad', El País, 22 April 2001.
12. On 24 January 1977 far-right gunmen murdered five people, four of whom were communist labour lawyers, in an office in the Atocha district of Madrid. The Communist Party refused to be provoked and organized an impressive display of silent solidarity at the funeral. It is argued that the discipline and maturity of the PCE at this point facilitated their subsequent legalization.
13. Fernando León Solís, 'The transition(s) to democracy and discourses of memory', International Journal of Iberian Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2003), pp.50-54.
14. Stephanie R. Golob, '"Forced to be Free"' (note 8), pp.34, 41.
15. Paloma Aguilar, 'Justice, Politics and Memory in the Spanish Transition', in Barahona de Brito, Gonzaléz Enríquez and Aguilar (note 6).
16. Paloma Aguilar (Note 14), p.97) quotes that, between 1975 and 1980, 460 violent deaths for political purposes were registered and about 400 people died in right- and left-wing terrorist offences.
17. The continued presence of fear comes out strongly in many of the comments reported in the newspaper articles covering the discovery of mass graves. Many people in small towns and villages have always known of the existence of, and often the exact location of, civil war graves, but have never dared to speak of this knowledge until now. Carlos E. Cué, 'La tierra devuelve a sus muertos', El País, 1 July 2002
18. and Carlos E. Cué, 'Los Desaparecidos españoles', El País 6 August 2002.
19. Paul Preston made this comment during the second episode of a three-part radio series on Franco presented by Miles Kington and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 9 August 2003.
20. For example, Asunción Álvarez Méndez, believing she would die before anyone opened the roadside grave in Piedrafita de Babia where her brother is buried along with 36 others, gave her family a map for safekeeping detailing the exact location of the grave. Carlos E. Cué, 'La tierra devuelve a sus muertos', El País, 1 July 2002.
21. The Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory estimates that approximately 30,000 non-identified bodies, killed between 1936 and 1977, lie in common graves across Spain, including the most famous disappeared person of all, Federico García Lorca. See 'Una ONG pide a la ONU que interceda ante España para investigar los desaparecidos en la Guerra Civil', La Vanguardia, 21 August 2002.
22. This figure is based on searching El País archives from the first civil war grave to be opened in October 2000 until the end of August 2003. Exact figures are difficult to establish at present, however, as no national register has yet been established and the discovery of civil war graves is now increasingly reported in the local, rather than the national, press. In Catalonia the government has created a commission to study the location of civil war graves and suggestions have been made to create a DNA bank (see 'La Generalitat crea una comisión para localizar fosas comunes del franquismo', La Vanguardia, 8 January 2003) whilst the Aranzadi Science Association has calculated the existence of approximately 26 graves in the Basque Country alone (Isabel Camacho, 'Aranzadi elabora un mapa señalando 26 fosas comunes de la Guerra Civil', El País, 28 July 2003). The lack of national co-ordination will undoubtedly hamper the task of recovering the dead.
23. Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, Second Declaration of the ARMH before the UN Working Group on Forced Diappearances, 2002, available at .
24. 'Una ONG pide a la ONU que interceda ante España para investigar los desaparecidos en la Guerra Civil', La Vanguardia, 21 August 2002.
25. The lawyer Montserrat Sans is herself the granddaughter of a Spanish Republican who died in a German concentration camp during the Second World War. Carlos E. Cué, 'El caso de las fosas de la Guerra Civil llega hasta la ONU', El País, 21 August 2002.
26. These obligations result primarily from the United Nations Declaration concerning the Protection of All People From Forced Disappearances in 1992 to which Spain, like the majority of countries, was a signatory.
27. Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, Second Declaration of the ARMH before the UN Working Group on Forced Disappearances, 2002, available at .
28. María de la Cinta Ramblado-Minero, 'El Re/nacimiento de la Novela Histórica Femenina en España: Angeles Caso, Dulce Chacón y Josefìna Aldecoa', paper delivered at the Association of Contemporary Iberian Studies Conference, Chester 2003, p.3.
29. I b i d.
30. 'EI ADN permite identificar por primera vez a un desaparecido de la Guerra Civil', La Vanguardia, 19 May 2003.
31. Santiago Macías and Emilo Silva, Las Fosas de Franco (Madrid: Temas de Hoy, 2003);
32. Carlos Elordi, Los Años Difíciles (Madrid: Aguilar, 2002);
33. Rafael Torres, Desaparecidos de la Guerra de España (1936-?) (Madrid: La Esfera de los Libros, 2002).
34. In the introduction to the book Elordi writes 'We had the feeling that, almost by accident, we were opening a floodgate that had been closed for too long, and that there were many people, from many different age groups, who had been waiting a long time for an opportunity like this to bring to light, almost like a cry for freedom, the long-hidden truth. "I need to relate my past", said one letter;
35. another said, "It's about time someone remembered us, we who have been silent for ever."' Carlos Elordi, Los Años Difíciles (Madrid:Aguilar, 2002), pp.14-15.
36. This is a point confirmed by Elordi. He writes that, 'when people wrote into the programme, they didn't do so in order to claim anything, and certainly not to claim revenge which did not appear in any of the letters received, far from it. People wrote so they could be heard, so that people would know of the pain they had endured for years, so that people would know that they had not forgotten it.' Ibid., p.16.
37. The connection between the struggles of the two periods is highlighted in an anecdote related by Alfonso Guerra in his intervention in the debate in the Constitutional Commission on 20 November 2002. Guerra remarked on a conversation he had had with Spanish Republican exiles in Mexico who told him that every year they paid homage to the Spanish Constitution. Alfonso Guerra asked, logically it seemed, if they celebrated on the 14th April, the date of the Second Republic Constitution. On the contrary, they responded, they celebrated on the 6th December because they understood that the aspirations and illusions they had placed in the 1931 constitution were reflected in the 1978 constitution. Constitutional Commission Debate on 20 November, available at (accessed 23 April 2003).
38. David A. Crocker, 'Transitional Justice and International Civil Society: Toward a Normative Framework', Constellations, Vol.5, No.4 (1998), p.500.
39. The date marks the death of Franco and the death of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of the Falange.
40. Elin Skaar, 'Truth Commissions, Trials-or Nothing? Policy Options in Democratic Transitions', Third World Quarterly, Vol.20, No.6 (1999), p.1124.
41. Stephanie R. Golob, 'The Pinochet Case: "Forced to be Free" Abroad and at Home' (note 9), p.47.
42. Paloma Aguilar (note 14), p.94.
43. Ibid., p.97.
44. As Golob demonstrates, transitional pacts are always forward-looking. She writes: 'Pacting itself emphasizes the "shadow of the future" in the sense meant by the literature on co-operation, as the incremental and mutually-reinforcing positive spiral in which each side knows the "game" will repeat and thus has an incentive to not allow the game to "break down" by defecting. This pattern is then projected on to the first election of the democratic system, and to each subsequent election, parliamentary vote, constitutional convention, economic pact involving labour and business, and referendum. Each experience with peaceful conflict resolution and democratic deal-making is a vote for continuing on the incremental, forward path towards consolidated democracy.' Golob '"Forced to be Free"' (note 8), p.31.
45. The following quotation is representative of this strong remembrance 'In the towns and villages where everything is known and nothing is forgotten, people know the exact location of the graves.' Carlos E. Cué, '1.000 peticiones para que la ONU investigue a los desaparecidos', El País, 1 July 2002.
46. Paloma Aguilar (note 14), p.114, argues that although nothing similar to the truth commissions of Latin America took place in Spain, a few private initiatives were undertaken, but they all fell foul of the Amnesty Law of 1977.
47. Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, Second Declaration of the ARMH before the UN Working Group on Forced Disappearances, 2002, available at .
48. Richard Gunther, 'Spain: The Very Model of the Modem Elite Settlement', in John Higley and Richard Gunther (eds), Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
49. Santos Juliá, 'Acuerdo sobre el pasado', El País, 24 Nov. 2002.
50. Nancy Bermeo, The Power of the People, Working Paper No.97 (Barcelona: Institut de Ciencies Politiques i Socials/ICPS, 1997).
51. The phrase is attributed to Camacho the leader of the Workers Commissions at that time in light of the fact that the workers had to accept wage increases well below the high inflation rates.
52. Nancy Bermeo (note 45) and Tarrow, Power in Movement (note 3) criticize accounts of democratization that start just prior to the transition thereby missing out the period of prolonged struggle in which organisations in civil society may be very active.
53. Interview with the King Juan Carlos first broadcast in 1981 and rebroadcast during the third episode of a three-part radio series on Franco presented by Miles Kington and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 16 August 2003. On the mythological status of the King see Hugh O'Donnell, 'Constructing the Citizen-Ying: Monarchy, Media and Modernity in Modern Spain', International Journal of Iberian Studies, Vol.9, No.3 (1996), pp.143-54.
54. Paloma Aguilar (note 14), p.94.
55. Sydney Tarrow, 'Mass Mobilisation and Regime Change: Pacts, Reform and Popular Power in Italy (1918-22) and Spain (1975-1978)', in Richard Gunther, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros and Hans-Jurgen Puhle (eds), The Politics of Democratic Consolidation (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1995), p.206.
56. Mahmood Mandami, 'Reconciliation without Justice', South African Review of Books, Vol. 45 (November/December1996), p.3. In the same article, Mandami quotes Frank Chikane, the secretary-general of the South African Conference of Churches from 1987-1994: 'It seemed to me that the concept of reconciliation was being equated with negotiations, political settlements, and so on. This, I believe, robs the word "reconciliation" of its deeper meaning, one which includes the concept of healing. Negotiations can result from political pressures or from a mutual decision by parties to avoid a war because the costs are too great. This does not necessarily mean the parties have had a change of heart - they are simply relocating the battleground to the negotiation table or to parliament.' (Ibid., p.3).
57. See Josep Ramoneda, 'La consigna y el aniversario', El País, 2 November 2000.
58. For example, the PP rejected the Socialist proposal to rehabilitate the guerrillas who fought against Franco well into the 1950s. See Carlos E. Cué 'El PP rechaza la propuesta socialista de 'rehabilitar' a los guerrilleros 'maquís', El País, 28 February 2001.
59. It is perhaps unsurprising that the PP has been reluctant to confront the past given its indirect historical links to Francoism, what is more surprising is the tardiness with which the Socialists have put this issue on their agenda.
60. Javier Márquez, 'Las Fosas del Silencio', Cambio 16, 7 April 2003, p.25.
61. Ibid., p.24.
62. Proposals for discussion came from the Socialist Party, the United Left Party (the successor of the old Spanish Communist Party), and the Basque and Catalan parliamentary groups.
63. Carlos E. Cué, 'El PP condena el golpe de Franco y promete honrar a todas las víctimas de la Guerra Civil', El País, 21 November 2002.
64. Javier Márquez (note 55), p.24.
65. León Solís (note 12), p.55.
66. Carlos E. Cué, 'Doble Rasero para las fosas de la guerra', El País 20 March 2003;
67. M. Neudecker, 'Cultura subvenciona in año más a la Fundación Francisco Franco', El País, 26 August 2003.
68. See Monica Threllfall, Consensus Politics in Spain: Insider Perspectives (Bristol: Intellect, 2000), p.6.