The text adopted after a tight vote in Parliament proclaims “illegal” the regime established by General Franco and makes the state responsible for the search for the remains of the missing civil war and dictatorship.
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In October 2019, Spain transferred the coffin of Francisco Franco from its mausoleum of the Los Caídos valleum (“The valley of those who fell”), immense basilica built to its glory by thousands of political prisoners and containing The bones of more than 33,000 victims of the two civil war camps, towards a small municipal cemetery. “The public tribute to the dictator was more than an anachronism or an anomaly, it was an affront to Spanish democracy,” said the chief of the executive, the socialist Pedro Sanchez, determined to heal the wounds of the kingdom Inherited from forty years of dictatorship. Far from stopping there, three years later, the Spanish government continues to advance in the restoration of the memory of the victims of the civil war (1936-1939) and the dictatorship.
After a tight vote -166 votes for, 153 against and 14 abstentions – marked by lively controversies, the Spanish Parliament approved, Thursday, July 14, the new bill of “democratic memory”, a new, hardening law hardening the condemnation of Francoism. After a last visit to the Senate, it will replace the law of “historical memory”, which the socialist government of José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero had approved in 2007, filling certain gaps.
While the 2007 law declared “illegitimate” the Franquistes courts, the new text proclaims the regime established by Franco “illegal” and cancels all the sentences dictated by its courts for political or conscience crimes. Making the state responsible for the research, identification and exhumation of the remains of the missing civil war and dictatorship, it provides for the creation of a list of victims, a national map of common pits or ‘A centralized DNA bank and the development of multi -year plans aimed at accelerating the openings of common pits.
The law publicly recognizes the role of women in the fight against Francoism, the “repression” of Catalan, Basque and Galician regional languages and the “right to truth” of the republican victims. It eliminates thirty-three nobiliary titles conceded between 1948 and 1978 by the dictator to the closest collaborators of the regime, starting with the “Duchy of Franco”, penalizes the exaltation of Francoism, and modifies the law of official secrets to guarantee the access to state archives. It also requires the study of Franco repression in school programs.
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