Spain votes to keep amnesty law Franco period

[PhoenixAsh]

Spains lower house voted to keep the amnesty law from 1977 which continues to make it impossible to indict people for the crimes of the Franco regime from 1939-1975.

Apparantly the initiative against the law was taken by the Galliscian Nationalist Party (BNG)....they pointed out Spain indicts others in other countries for such crimes even if they have an amnesty.

Garzon one opened up an investigantion and was promptly indicted for misuse of his ambt.

http://www.nu.nl/buitenland/2569593/misdaden-franco-dictatuur-worden-niet-vervolgd.html

I have a link...in Ducth. If others have an English language link...please post.



What do you think? Should these crimes be indicted and prosecuted?

[Geiseric]

What were the crimes? Not like it really matters, everybody should be held accountable for their actions... Not meaning I support America's prison system, just a matter of principle.

[North Star]

I think it depends on the context. indicting Pinochet was a good idea because he was an actual leader of the Chilean coup, but going after 90 year old rank and file Nationalists, Nazis and other assorted right wing extremists around the world that may have massacred people wouldn't even as be as productive as a full inquiry into historical events. Justice is so abstract to me. I'm apathetic to trials of many elderly Nazis. They're no longer a threat even if they are guilty. At this point in time the resources involved could be better directed elsewhere. I feel many of these trials attempts to externalize Nazism and right wing extremism by individualizing the evil and placing it purely on individuals while ignoring the fact that the rise of Franco and Hitler are do to the bourgeoisie's actions to halt the class struggle. Depending on who exactly is still out there I'd support a repeal of the Spanish law. Is there anyone really out there that is high ranking enough to show the collusion between the Spanish bourgeoisie and the Franco regime? If not prosecuting overzealous Guardia Civil and prison guards isn't really going to accomplish anything.

[x359594]

What were the crimes?...

Extra judicial killings, slave labor, and concentration camps for starters.

Due for publication soon is The Spanish Holocaust by Paul Preston. Preston makes a clear distinction between violence in the Republican and Francoist zones, both quantitively and qualitatively. The murders and semi-judicial massacres perpetrated by the fascist-backed rebels were almost always officially sanctioned and were an integral and carefully-planned part of their policy of terrifying the Spanish people into submission. By contrast, the killings in Republican-held Spain took place in the first few months of the war when law and order broke down and elements on the left took spontaneous revenge on individuals and groups – such as the Church – who backed the July 1936 coup against the elected Republican government.

Murders in the Republican zone, for which there is a reliable figure of 49,272, says Preston, were exhaustively investigated, both by the Republic before its defeat and by the victorious Francoists. The process of counting the victims of Francoist violence could only begin after the Caudillo's death in 1975 and is still incomplete. “It is unlikely that such deaths were fewer than 150,000 and they could well be more,” says Preston. This figure excludes battlefield deaths on both sides, along with the unknown numbers killed in the bombing campaigns against Republican cities such as Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. Nor does it include the many thousands of refugees who died in bombing attacks as they fled Francoist advances, nor the tens of thousands of refugees and prisoners who subsequently died from disease and malnutrition. “All of this constitutes what I believe can legitimately be called the Spanish Holocaust,” says Preston. “I hope the book will show the extent of the suffering unleashed upon their own fellow citizens by the arrogance and brutality of the officers who rose up on 17 July 1936. They provoked war, a war that was unnecessary and whose consequences still reverberate in Spain today.”

[syndicat]

i think the figure of 49,000 is the number of people assassinated under the authorty of the committees set up in towns under the fascist army during the civil war. the number executed after the civil war is sometimes put at 150,000.

and then there are the people garroted and otherwise condemned under the 40 year fascist regime. there have been demands as part of the "historic memory" discourse in Spain in recent years to clear the names of people condemned by the Franco regime.

bringing to trial the responsible parties for the mass executions & concentration camps after the civil war, if they are still alive, or the later police state actions under the franco regime....this is what is prevented by the 1977 amnesty law.

[PhoenixAsh]

I think it depends on the context. indicting Pinochet was a good idea because he was an actual leader of the Chilean coup, but going after 90 year old rank and file Nationalists, Nazis and other assorted right wing extremists around the world that may have massacred people wouldn't even as be as productive as a full inquiry into historical events. Justice is so abstract to me. I'm apathetic to trials of many elderly Nazis. They're no longer a threat even if they are guilty. At this point in time the resources involved could be better directed elsewhere. I feel many of these trials attempts to externalize Nazism and right wing extremism by individualizing the evil and placing it purely on individuals while ignoring the fact that the rise of Franco and Hitler are do to the bourgeoisie's actions to halt the class struggle. Depending on who exactly is still out there I'd support a repeal of the Spanish law. Is there anyone really out there that is high ranking enough to show the collusion between the Spanish bourgeoisie and the Franco regime? If not prosecuting overzealous Guardia Civil and prison guards isn't really going to accomplish anything.

I think you have a very interesting point here. The crimes are indeed often lifted out of context in such trials and used as examples of degenerating systems rather than inherrent political ideology. More often than not the induvidual is charged and prosecuted and the system which brought forth the policy and ideas and orders and created the circumstances in which crimes could be committed is simply ignored or in some cases not even mentioned.

That said. There is some merrit in doing investigative research and unveil the truth about such periods. Survivors often feel the need for recognition.

Since the period covered by the amesty is the post-civil war Franco regime from 39-75 and it was adopted to make an easy transformation from dictatorship to democracy possible a lot of crimes were ignored and never even investigated. This is indeed in sharp contrast to the pre-Franco era in which so called crimes and misbehaviour of opponents was scrupously disected and analysed. Many victims of Franco and the Fallangy did not get the recognition they deserve, nor are those responsible ever called to explain themselves.

Many top political and military leaders are still around. Maybe not of the civil war period. But certainly of the later decades of the dictatorship.

[x359594]

i think the figure of 49,000 is the number of people assassinated under the authorty of the committees set up in towns under the fascist army during the civil war. the number executed after the civil war is sometimes put at 150,000...

The 49,000 figure refers to killings that took place in the Republican zones. In Preston's earlier book The Spanish Civil War: Revolution, Reaction and Revenge he writes that "Deaths in the Republican zone were carefully registered...Deaths in the Nationalist zone were not similarly registered other than in those cases where the deaths were the result of summary (and, of course, totally illegal) courts martial. Accordingly, there are thousands more dead who just disappeared. Most deaths were not registered and many were simply buried in collective common graves...tens of thousands were officially executed, judicially murdered, between 1936 and 1945, when the Axis defeat imposed some caution on the Caudillo..."

Preston goes on to give a horrifying account of atrocities committed by the fascists in the zones they controlled during the war and after when they ruled the whole country, down to Franco's death in 1975.

On a personal note, I joined a demonstration called by the Spanish Refugee Aid Committee in 1974 in front of Iberia Airlines (the state owned airline)to protest the execution by garrote of Salvador Puig and Heinz Chez, evidence that Franco continued to murder his opponents right down to the end of his miserable life.

[syndicat]

okay. i had also heard the 50,000 figure for killings in the antifascist zone. in regard to mass disappaearances in the fascist zone, mass graves are continually being dug up in construction projects in Spain. in 1978 a mass grave with 7,000 bodies was uncovered outside Zaragoza.

[PhoenixAsh]

http://www.the-rock-of-gibraltar.com/Spanish-News/1561/judge-declares-franco-amnesty-law-invalid


Above is a link to an earlier article about Garzon reopening the case. Interesting facts are that the amnesty law I mentioned earlier, in contrast to what I mentioned earlier, also covers the entire period before 1977 instead of just the period 39-75.

The number of disappearances mentioned in somewhere around 133.000. The investigation was started because family members of those who disappeared want to burry their relatives and know their fates.

As a result of this Garzon was indicted in 2010 for exceeding his authority by opening this investigation. A case which was fervently argued against Garcon by the PP which houses some ex-Francoists. He is now suspended and works in The Hague with the ICC. What is more Garzon alledged that judges in his case are not impartial because of prior to trial involvement in different aspects of the case. The PP has also argued against changing the judges and what is more they are now influencing the nomination of very conservative judges in order to gain more influence on the judicial process.