Franco In Spain

I just finished watching a documentary about Franco and his legacy in Spain since his death in 1975. I knew about his numerous crimes and murders (especially how they related to my Spanish relatives) and how they were legally protected by the Democratic Spanish Government from 1975 until 2007 (with some saying until August 2018.) I didn’t know how many victims suffered under Franco or all the different ways he committed his crimes or the different ways the Spanish Government covered-up and continues to cover-up his crimes. 

A.)   Francoist Spain (España franquista): A totalitarian fascist dictatorship governed by Francisco Franco  from 1936-1975

1.)    Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) Pro-Franco Side (supported by Nazi Germany): 110,000 soldiers killed, 50,000 civilians killed. Anti-Franco Side (supported by the UK, the USA):  175,000 soldiers killed, 130,000 civilians killed, 500 British volunteers killed and 900 American volunteers killed.

2.)    White Terror (terror blanco) - also known as the Francoist Repression  (la Represión franquista): 1936-1945:  Politicide, Mass murder, forced labor, human experimentation and war rape against:  Loyalists to the Second Spanish Republic (1931–39), Liberals, the Popular Front, and Socialists; Trotskyists, Communists, anarchists; Protestant Christians and freethinkers, intellectuals and Freemasons; and nationalists from Galicia, Catalonia, and the Basque Country. Between 58,000 and 400,000 men, women and children were victims of Franco during this time.

3.)    Spanish concentration camps (Campos de concentración franquistas) from 1936 until 1947. More than 190 concentration camps, holding between 367,000 and about half a million prisoners. Inmates were: Republican ex-combatants of the Spanish Republican Army, Spanish Republican Air Force or the Spanish Republican Navy, as well as political dissidents, homosexuals, and regular convicts. Those who were regarded as "unrecoverable" were shot. The prisoners were used as forced laborers for reconstruction works (Belchite), to mine coal, extract mercury, build highways and dams, and dig canals, the construction of the Carabanchel Prison (Madrid), in the Arco de la Victoria (Madrid) and in the Valley of the Fallen (Cuelgamuros).

B.)    The Spanish transition to Democracy (Transición española a la democracia) from Franco’s death in 1975 to the 1982 General Election (surviving several coup d'état attempts.)

1.)    Sociological Francoism (franquismo sociológico) is an expression used in Spain which attests to the social characteristics typical of Francoism that survived in Spanish society after the death of Francisco Franco in 1975 and continue to the present day. The Spanish social majority, including even those identified with the anti-Francoist opposition, perpetuate the conservative and survivalist behaviors that were learned and transmitted from generation to generation since the 1940s. These include self-censorship and the voluntary submission and conformity to authority – which in extreme cases could even be classified as servility (most commonly identified with the "silent majority") – which provided the regime with its cheapest, most effective and most ubiquitous form of repression.

2.)    Pact of Forgetting (Pacto del olvido) is the Spanish political decision (by both the leftist and rightist parties) to avoid dealing with the legacy of Francoism after the 1975 death of Francisco Franco. The pact underpinned the transition to democracy of the 1970s/1980s and ensured that difficult questions about the recent past were suppressed for fear of endangering 'national reconciliation' and the restoration of liberal-democratic freedoms. Responsibility for the Spanish Civil War, and for the repression that followed, was not to be placed upon any particular social or political group.

3.)    The Spanish 1977 Amnesty Law (Ley de Amnistía en España de 1977) is a law promulgated by the Parliament of Spain in 1977, two years after caudillo Francisco Franco's death. The law freed political prisoners and permitted those exiled to return to Spain, but guaranteed impunity for those who participated in crimes under the Civil War and Francoist Spain. The law is still in force, and has been used as a reason for not investigating and prosecuting Francoist human rights violations.

C.)    Kingdom of Spain (Reino de España): Present-day

1.)    Historical Memory Law (Ley de Memoria Histórica), is a Spanish law passed in 2007. The Historical Memory Law principally recognizes the victims on both sides of the Spanish Civil War, gives rights to the victims and the descendants of victims of the Civil War and the subsequent dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, and formally condemns the Franco Regime. From 2011 until 2018 Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and his Government curtailed State help in the exhumation of victims.

2.)    On 24 August 2018, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez approved legal amendments to the Historical Memory Law stating that only those who died during the civil war will be buried at the Valle de los Caídos, resulting in plans to exhume Franco's remains for reburial elsewhere. The government gave Franco's family a 15-day deadline to decide Franco's final resting place, or else a "dignified place" will be chosen by the government. The family finally agreed. On 13 September 2018, the Congress of Deputies voted 176-2, with 165 abstentions, to remove Franco's body from the monument.

3.)    On 21 November 2018 the Spanish Senate passed, with a 97-0 vote and 136 abstensions, a motion officially condemning francoist ideology and any kind of exaltation of it

Spain should have dealt with it's dark past long before now and even today it is very slow in doing any real action and that is a shame - especially for the victims.