Ley de Memoria Histórica

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Valley of the Fallen - Franco's Mausoleum. The law prohibits political events in this location.

The Spanish Ley de Memoria Histórica ( Law of Historical Memory ) - officially: Ley por la que se reconocen y amplían derechos y se establecen medidas en favor de quienes padecieron persecución o violencia durante la Guerra Civil y la Dictadura ( Law whereby rights are recognized and and funds are created for those who experienced persecution and violence during the civil war and the dictatorship ) is a law that was passed on October 31, 2007 by the Spanish Chamber of Deputies . It was based on a draft of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party under Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero .

The law recognizes the victims on both sides of the Spanish Civil War and during the dictatorship of General Franco .

Provisions

The main provisions of this law are:

  • Condemnation of the Franco regime
  • Removal of French symbols from public buildings and squares (French signs and symbols, for example on church buildings, are not affected by the law, provided they do not receive state subsidies)
  • General promise of public help in the search, identification and eventual exhumation of victims of Francoist oppression who are still considered missing and who have often been buried in mass graves (with no guarantee of entitlement to financial support)
  • General denial of the legitimacy of laws and judicial proceedings initiated by the Franco regime, although these judgments will continue to be declared legally binding
  • Temporary amendment of the Spanish Citizenship Law by guaranteeing the right of return and original citizenship for those and their descendants who had to leave Spain for political or economic reasons during the Franco dictatorship
  • Providing aid to the victims of the civil war or the Franco regime and their descendants

criticism

The "Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory" (ARMH) , which has set itself the task of locating and exhuming the murdered from the mass graves, described the law as a great disappointment. It does not contain any guarantee of subsidization. In the past few years, the association had exhumed around nine hundred dead. "The state, which pretends to be interested in coming to terms with the past, does not contribute anything," said Emilio Silva. The group of the Catalan ERC voted against the draft because it had watered down the original concerns too much. The left-wing nationalist party had previously submitted its own, much more far-reaching draft. One of ERC's main criticisms of the law relates to the fact that crimes against humanity perpetrated against political opponents by the Franco dictatorship continue - and against the case law of the International Criminal Court in The Hague and the European Court of Justice in Strasbourg - from the amnesty are covered, whereas the judgments of the dictatorship against resistance fighters are still legally valid.

The Ley de Memoria Histórica received sharp criticism from within Spain's bourgeois camp, especially from the opposition conservative Partido Popular . Its chairman Mariano Rajoy noted that this law would unnecessarily open new wounds. The General Secretary of the People's Party, Ángel Acebes, went further and accused Prime Minister Zapatero of being “obsessed with the past” and trying to manipulate the history of Spain by tracing the introduction of democracy back to the proclamation of the Second Republic in 1931 . Thus, Acebes feared, the social compromise, which after Franco's death had led to the reintroduction of the monarchy and the establishment of democracy via the so-called Transición , would be removed and Spanish society would be divided. Nevertheless, the party voted for some points of the law, such as the granting of aid to the victims of the civil war and the dictatorship and the ban on political events in the Valley of the Fallen, Franco's grave.

The Catalan Convergència i Unió voted for the law. Initially, however, representatives of this party also criticized the proposed law because remembrance or commemoration is a personal or scientific task.

Conservative journalists accused the socialist government of being driven by revanchism and wanting to win the civil war for their camp.

In circles close to Falange and by former Franco supporters, the Zapatero government was trying to suppress freedom of expression and to prevent any form of celebration and religious devotion in honor of those who fell “for God and for Spain”.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ El País , 1/11/2007, La ley de memoria se aprueba entre aplausos de invitados antifranquistas
  2. ↑ http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/10/31/europe/EU-GEN-Spain-Civil-War-Legislation.php International Herald Tribune: Main points of Spain's Historical Memory Law
  3. ^ Paul Ingendaay, in: Seventy Years of Shame: The Peace of the Dead of Civil War FAZ, on September 1, 2009
  4. ↑ http://www.derechos.org/nizkor/espana/doc/esqley.html
  5. ^ Controversy over Franco dictatorship - Judge Garzón is sidelined taz, on March 12, 2010
  6. ↑ http://www.soitu.es/soitu/2008/11/20/info/1227187465_553387.html
  7. ↑ PSOE - http://www.psoe.es/ambito/saladeprensa/news/index.do?action=View&id=162628
  8. ↑ ABC , 09/07/2007 [1]
  9. ↑ ABC , 06/11/2005 [2]
  10. ↑ El Mundo, 20/11/2008 [3]
  11. ↑ Luis María Ansón, 4/10/2005