This article may help you to better understand the "Historical Memory Law" of Spain, which passed the Corte last year, and its story followed in Seoul, at our commission last week. Refer to the story one below from this for more.
Sixty years after Spain’s savage civil war in which more than one million died, the hatred and the demons left
in its wake were reawakened last week in a ceremony in Saint Peter’s Square. For the first time in its 2000
year history, the Vatican beatified 498 “martyrs” all at one time, including priests, bishops, seminarians,
nuns and religious lay persons who were killed by the republican side at the beginning of that war in 1936.
The 498 were not the first to be so beatified. Between 1987 and 2001, Pope Jean Paul II recognized 471 other
“martyrs”, all followers of the nationalist side led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco. (According to the
Vatican, in order for a “martyr” to be beatified, it must be proved that he or she was killed out of hatred
for his or her faith, and not for political reasons.) Since the Roman Emperor Nero persecuted the early
Christians, there have been other such episodes: during the French Revolution, the anti-clerical war in Mexico
and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, thousands of clergy were killed and thus became “martyrs”, still
venerated today in Catholic churches.
Last week’s ceremony, attended by thousands of Catholics representing every diocese in Spain, was to many
others, a provocation. Critics say the Vatican could not have chosen a worse time for it. It preceded, by only
three days, a vote scheduled to take place in Spain’s Parliament, on a law that would make symbolic amends to
victims of the war and of the brutal dictatorship under Franco that lasted until his death in 1975. The “law
of historical memory” would declare as illegitimate the military tribunals that condemned thousands to prison
or death, and create a state fund to finance the process of exhuming mass graves from both sides. It would also
ban public symbols that commemorate Franco and his allies and turn the massive mausoleum where he is buried into
a monument to all the war dead. As one victim of Franco, imprisoned and tortured for 23 years told a reporter,
“We’re still walking around in cities with streets named after him.”
The law before Parliament is a milestone for the Socialist government of José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, whose
grandfather was executed by one of Franco’s firing squads. But it is as divisive as the beatification ceremony
by the Vatican, because Spain’s population of more than 40,000,000 remains deeply divided over the war and
question whether it is wise to dig up the past.
Spain has had a Socialist government since 2004 and its relationship with the Vatican has been strained ever
since. It has angered the Holy See by introducing legislation that made divorce on demand easier. It agreed to
accept gay marriage and now permits abortion, all actions that have outraged the Church. It also scrapped
previous plans to make religious studies obligatory in Spanish schools. And to inflict financial pain as well,
last year it stopped making direct government payments to the Church, instead allowing tax payers to decide if
they wished to contribute .07 percent of their taxes to it.
Strife between the Church and secular forces in Spain is hardly new. Violence by leftist groups against the
Church erupted in 1931 as they targeted what they saw as a symbol of wealth, repression and inequality. It was
these attacks that gave Franco the excuse to launch his forces against the leftists and finally to bring down
the Socialist government in a military coup. Outright civil war began in 1936, continuing until 1939, during
which the Church staunchly supported Franco. It later claimed that between 6,000 and 7,000 clergy paid with
their lives for this support. But the Vatican has never shown any sign of repentance for its support of the
brutal Fanco regime. As those who strongly opposed to the beatification ceremony issued in a statement said:
“Because the Church has never asked for pardon for its actions during the war, these beatifications are
inopportune and discriminatory. They manifest the incapacity of the hierarchy to review its positions of 70
years ago.”
The war had influence far beyond Spain’s borders. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy gave military support to
Franco. It was their planes that took part in the murderous bombing of the town of Guernica, made famous by
Picasso’s painting of the event. The republican side had its outside supporters as well. Hundreds of
idealistic, left leaning Americans joined the Abraham Lincoln brigades to fight along side republican forces.
The author Ernest Hemingway was among them and his longest novel, “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, was about that
fratricidal war. The novel’s doomed hero, Robert Jordan, affirms what he and his fellow volunteers believed
was a just cause. He says “If we win here we will win everywhere. The world is a fine place and worth
fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.” (the novel was made into a prize winning film starring Gary
Cooper and Ingrid Bergman.) One of the greatest photogaphs ever taken during a war was that of Robert Capa’s
picture of a republican soldier at the moment he was shot and killed by enemy fire.
After Franco finally died and Spain became a constitutional monarchy under King Jean Carlos, the country made a
remarkably peaceful transition to demcracy and eventual economic prosperity. There were no truth and
reconciliation commissions or war crime trials such as other countries have had to endure following a war.
People on both sides were willing to move on and to try to forget the horrors of that war that pitted brother
against brother, much as the U.S.’s Civil War had done.
That is why it is so dangerous to resurrect the ghosts of the past. When historians speak of exhuming bodies
from mass graves, some say there are 85,000 of them killed by the republicans, 50,000 massacred by the
nationalist forces, it opens old wounds many hoped had long since healed. In an editorial this month, El
Pais, a liberal newspaper, said the government did not need a law to exhume bodies and to order new
compensations for victims. Defendants of the law retort that it would honor all civil war victims, not just
those who died on the republican side.
But historians point out that the law would make the state liable for a host of lawsuits demanding compensation
that could run into billions of euros if it annulled all previous military convictions. To many, however, the
law is not about settling old scores but about remembering those who suffered and restoring dignity to those who
were denied it.
