Save Me…… from failing to confront the ghosts of the past

In 1998 former Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested on a visit to the UK, my home country, by British authorities acting on an international warrant indicting him for human rights violations in his home country.

He was held under house arrest in London for nearly 18 months while lawyers and judges argued the case. It was a milestone as it was the first time that judges in Europe claimed universal jurisdiction over a former head of state supposedly covered by amnesty laws in his own country.

While he eventually returned to Chile, the investigation led to judges in South America to strike out amnesty laws there so that dictators like Pinochet could be put on trial in the future.

The man who brought the indictment, and whose investigation helped change those laws in Chile, was Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, the same man who opened an investigation into the deaths of thousands of people during Spain’s own Franco dictatorship.

Why do I mention this now? Well, this very week Garzon is himself in the dock in Spain, accused of abusing his powers and of overstepping his authority as a judge.

It is a cynical trial, one brought by right wing groups in Spain, angry at what they see as Garzon trying to bring the Franco regime to justice for past crimes. They claim that, just like in Chile, Spain’s own amnesty law covers crimes committed during the Franco regime. I sincerely hope this trial, opposed by international human rights groups including Amnesty International, is thrown out as soon as possible.

But, for me as a Brit living in Spain, the fact that it has come about at all, raises a more interesting point about the country, its people and its history.

I’ve always been fascinated by people’s views here in Spain on the Franco regime, how they felt, what they did, what they thought living under a dictatorship that crushed descent, murdered thousands and destroyed democracy.

But what has fascinated me more is the fact that so many people just don’t want to talk about it or say we should just forget about it. Maybe because it brings up painful memories, maybe because it split families in two, maybe because it’s an embarrassing and distressing period in Spain’s recent history for many people.

But is it good to leave it all in the past? I don’t mean people should dredge it all up again. But isn’t it at least worth addressing, analyzing and understanding so that it can finally put to rest what I am sure are deep-seated grievances, agonies, hurt, pain and loss suffered by so many people. Learning from history means the same mistakes may not happen again. Isn’t this exactly what Baltasar Garzon’s investigations have all been about?

I am aware that Spain did pass a 1977 amnesty law covering the Franco period in an attempt, perhaps, to make a fresh start, to put history firmly in the past, to give Spanish society an opportunity to move forward without recrimination. Perhaps.

But let’s not forget that it was done at a time of great instability, less than two years after the death of Franco and with the unity government still greatly sensitive to the role of right-wing hardliners in the military, the very group who had seized power so violently in the first place in the Civil War.

What I’m suggesting is that perhaps there was a certain amount of pressure to pass the law to account for those in the military who still supported and espoused the continuation of the dictatorship. I’m not saying that it was necessarily passed under duress, but history records that there were many in the military and the right-wing who bitterly resented and opposed moves toward full and open democracy in Spain after the death of Franco in 1975. Indeed, as many will know, there was another attempted military coup in 1981 which, thankfully, failed, but which had the country on a knife-edge for a short time.

So how do we reconcile history but ensure justice is served? Is it right to leave things in the past? Don’t they just fester if they are not addressed? Isn’t it better to seek justice, not necessarily retribution and revenge, but at least an admission of responsibility? It’s estimated that up to 50,000 people were murdered by the regime in the years after the end of the Civil War in 1939. 50,000 people. Imagine it. Let me put that into perspective for you. Fill the Sevilla football club stadium to capacity, not a single seat left empty. All gone. Murdered.

These were people perceived to be opponents of the regime. Each one of those people had families; mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters. Many families still don’t know to this day where the bodies of their loved ones are buried. How can Spanish society possibly put history to rest with this hanging over its head? Don’t these people deserve to know what happened to their loved ones?

I acknowledge that some significant things have been done by recent Spanish governments to apparently redress history. For example, the national anthem of Spain no longer contains the lyrics introduced by Franco, and in 2007 the government banned all public references to the Franco regime and removed statues, street names, memorials and symbols associated with it. Such actions are good, but to me, they seem only to bury history a bit deeper rather than deal with it.

Why does this question of Spain’s past fascinate me so much? Well, I think perhaps because I come from a country that has had relatively stable democracy over many generations (that’s not to ignore the fact that it has also been responsible for a few chaotic experiments in democracy elsewhere in the world throughout history). I have never lived under a dictatorship where personal freedoms, the right to vote, the right to descent, were crushed with threats and violence. I suppose I consider myself lucky in that respect. Some people might suggest that, therefore, I could hardly begin to understand the perspective of people in Spain and how they view their own history.

But that doesn’t make sense to me. How can you not want to atone for the past and put it to rest, once and for all? Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. Amnesties don’t repair the pain and the hurt.

In Chile, under the Pinochet regime, at least 3,000 people were murdered and more than 20,000 people detained and tortured.

I leave the last word to Garzon himself: “Will Franco’s victims now have fewer rights than Pinochet’s victims?”