Exhuming graves from Franco’s regime

As I wrote in an article on the 19th October, “ Sixty nine years after the end of the Spanish Civil War and 33 after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco, a kind of hope is felt among many of the families of his victims.” To that end, the Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon had open an inquiry into atrocities that happened during the Franco era. But from the beginning he was challenged by Spanish prosecutors in order to halt his probe. Finally, yesterday we learn that Garzon had droped the probe citing a dispute over whether he haded jurisdiction to proceed In a 152-page writ he stuck to his original arguments that he could investigate the offense of a crime against humanity -the killings of tens of thousands of civilians during and after the 1936-1939 war- perpetrated by the regime of Gen. Francisco Franco. Garzon said such offenses have no statute of limitations.
Nevertheless in his writ the judge said he was dropping the case against Franco and his allies after state prosecutors questioned his jurisdiction over crimes committed 70 years ago by people who are now dead and whose crimes were covered by an amnesty passed in 1977. In his statement, he passed responsibility to regional courts for opening 19 mass graves believed to hold the remains of hundreds of victims, including the one of Federico Garcia Lorca, the Spanish poet. Accordingly, the exhumations should now be handled by provincial courts, to speed up the process.
The interference of the state prosecutors had created great disappointment as it is believed that attempts to get regional courts to open investigations were usually fruitless. José María Pedreño, president of the State Federation of Forums for Historical Memory said, “It’s a disgrace. We have teams of Spanish peace keepers exhuming mass graves in Bosnia and yet we can’t even deal with our own graves. As a Spaniard, I find this shameful.” Nevertheless it is believed that Judge Garzon knew he was likely to be challenged and that he opened the investigation partly in the hope of putting pressure on the government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. Again, Pedreño said, “From a social point of view it has been positive. He (Garzon) has sent up a cloud of dust, prompted debate about this issue and awoken our consciences again.”
Having talked and emailed with many Spanish friends about this, most of them agree that the country needs to solve this part of their history for the good of all. There cannot exist any longer an amnesia among the senior generations and an ignorance among the youth.