When Spain is mentioned in the English-speaking world, romanticized images
of Mediterranean landscapes quickly come to mind. They are usually set to
a passionate flamenco-inspired soundtrack and mingle with the fantasy of
tantalizingly fresh paella, golden olive oil and ruby red wine. This is
the Spain most outsiders imagine and experience, and it is largely what
the Spanish economy has depended upon since the 1960s when the
dictatorship of General Francisco Franco launched a massive tourist
campaign to stimulate a struggling economy. The campaign was the stuff of
economic miracles. Spain rapidly became one of the world's premier
vacation destinations.
But all the sun in the world couldn't hide the horror lying in the shadows
of a country haunted by a recent war that touched every aspect of Spanish
life. At least not forever.
In 2000, twenty-five years after Franco's death, Emilio Silva, a
journalist searching for answers to questions about that war and his
family's relation to it accidentally discovered and exhumed the mass grave
where his grandfather's remains were located. Silva's grandfather, a
humble shop owner and supporter of the democratic state established in 1931, was summarily executed by members of the Falange--the Spanish fascist
party--along with twelve other people from his village in the north of
Spain shortly after Franco and a handful of generals launched a coup
against the Spanish Republic in July 1936. Hitler, Mussolini, and the
Catholic Church backed the conspirators while the United States, England
and France turned a blind eye to the massacre that ensued.
While the events of 1936-1939 are popularly referred to as 'the Spanish
Civil War," the term misrepresents what actually occurred. More than a
war between two more or less equally prepared and similarly matched sides,
it was the mass extermination of "los rojos"--anyone considered part of
"the anti-Spain" by the self-proclaimed, and well-armed, guardians of
national identity and patriotic spirit. The "reds" put up a long fight,
but ultimately they were killed, tortured, raped, imprisoned, kidnapped,
used as slave labor and/or driven into exile for four decades.
Like Emilio Silva's grandfather, hundreds of thousands of the victims of
such repression--continued by the Francoist state at the conclusion of the
war--continue to lie prostrate in mass graves. Since the exhumation in
2000, their descendents and sympathizers have formed a growing historical
memory movement. Like Antigone, they have repeatedly asked for one thing
from the Spanish state: nothing more than the possibility of exercising
their desire to properly bury their dead. Like Creon, the Spanish state
has consistently responded with statements, actions and laws that laugh in
the face of their ethical claim.
In 2008, Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, internationally famous for having
put Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet on trial for genocide in 1998,
admitted a series of lawsuits filed by several historical memory
organizations and individuals seeking assistance with the location and
exhumation of the remains of family members. Garzon subsequently opened
the first criminal case into the 1936 coup and the Francoist dictatorship.
He concluded that the generals who launched the war were guilty of crimes
against humanity, and ordered the exhumation of nineteen mass graves. A
few weeks later, Garzon was forced to close his case under pressure from
fellow judges of the National Court and the Attorney General's office.
Once again, the hopes of family members were crushed by the weight of law
and the callousness of the Spanish state.
(For a brief description of Garzon's case, see my article "On Human
Rights, Spain is Different" published on Common Dreams December 10, 2008:
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/10).
If the story ended here, it would be yet another sad lament in a long
litany of historical wrongs for the victims of Francoist repression. But
this story, unfortunately, is not over.
Shortly after Garzon withdrew his case, a far-right lobby and the
Falange--the same Spanish fascist party that killed Emilio Silva's
grandfather and dumped his body in a ditch like hundreds of thousands of
others--filed lawsuits against Garzon for opening the historic case. To
the surprise of many international law and human rights organizations, the
Supreme Court admitted the suits last May. Yesterday Judge Luciano Varela
ruled that Garzon must stand trial. He faces removal from the National
Court and banishment from the bench for twelve to twenty years, which
would mean the sudden end of Garzon's illustrious, if controversial, legal
career.
While Garzon has been roundly criticized for self-promotion and basking in
the spotlight of high-profile cases, such personal faults are irrelevant
to the case at hand. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the Fascist
party and its associates--which appears quite possible--it will be a
far-reaching victory for the state of impunity that characterizes
contemporary Spain and a devastating loss for those seeking the most
minimal act of justice for the dead. It will also be a significant blow
to international criminal law, convert Spain into a legal embarrassment in
the eyes of the world and discredit the integrity of Spanish jurists.
This would seem bad enough, but if Garzon is debarred it also means that
fascism will be validated as a legitimate and effective political force in
democratic Spain. Not only will the family members of the victims of
fascist violence lose the only judge daring enough to challenge the 1977
amnesty law protecting those responsible for mass extermination and state
repression--a law considered illegal under international law--they will also
be forced to swallow the fact that, in Spain at least, democracy means
that fascist complaints carry more weight than the burden of those
traumatized by the Spanish state during much of the twentieth century.
Ten years into the twenty-first, the political panorama looks chillingly
familiar to those who have survived or studied Francoist "justice." Once
again, the force of law is being used to discipline those who challenge a
deeply unjust social order. But it is more than simply punishment; it is
a threat to those who might follow in the footsteps of Garzon, and an
insult to all the Antigones of the world. It is also the apparition of
fascism, alive and well in sunny Spain, rearing its ugly head from behind
long, haunting shadows.
In Madrid, you can almost hear its voice echoing throughout the hallowed
halls of justice: "Ole! Somebody pass the sangria..."