· Reform would stir up past, say conservatives
· Backers say compromise is crucial moment for SpainPaul Hamilos in Madrid The
Guardian, Thursday October 11 2007
Flor Baena remembers her brother Humberto as an "honourable man, tall and slim". He was an idealistic young philosophy student who opposed the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, but his political beliefs were to cost him his life.
Franco's death was just weeks away when, on September 27 1975, Baena was hauled in front of a military court, accused of killing a policeman in Madrid. This was impossible, says his sister, because he was in Portugal, but the alibi was never presented at his hastily arranged trial. The case against him was flimsy, relying on the witness statements of two women, one of whom later retracted her claims.
At the age of 24 Baena was killed by firing squad - one of the last five men to be executed under Franco.
"He had his political ideas but he was never involved in violent attacks. They killed him simply because he was a republican," said his sister. She has fought for years to clear his name, going through the Spanish courts and up to the European court of human rights because she wants him to be remembered "not as a killer, but as someone who was killed".
Last year the Socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, whose own grandfather was executed by Franco's forces, declared a "year of the recovery of historic memory".
But it has taken until this week for a compromise to be reached on a historical memory law that would mean that trials held by Franco's regime would be ruled illegitimate and his victims would be recognised. It will be voted on at the end of the month. Even this agreement was not unanimous - the conservative People's party refused to support it, saying the law unnecessarily "stirs up the past", while the Catalan Republican Left said it did not go far enough.
The civil war, which began in 1936 and resulted in Franco's 36-year dictatorship, cost an estimated 500,000 lives. After their victory Franco's nationalist forces killed thousands of republicans and sent many more to labour camps.
Many Spaniards believe that the transition to democracy that followed Franco's death in 1975 is a model for other former dictatorships, but it was based on a "pact of forgetting".
The Socialist parliamentary spokesman Diego López Garrido declared the compromise to be a crucial moment in Spain's history. "The law will provide definitive reparation and recognition for those who suffered in the civil war," he said.
But human rights groups have opposed many elements of the bill, saying that it falls short of providing justice. While the law describes the trials held under Franco as "illegitimate", it has not annulled them, because that would require each case to be reinvestigated, and the government does not want an avalanche of old cases.
Conservatives see Mr Zapatero's efforts as highly partial. El Mundo newspaper condemned the law for "talking only of the victims of Francoism, without ever mentioning the others", arguing that victims of the republicans have been ignored.
Emilio Silva, president of the Commission for the Recovery of the Historic Memory, describes the law as a necessary step for Spain, saying that "it normalises us with the rest of Europe". He is concerned that there is no provision "for a census of the victims, which would allow people to find out what happened to their relatives", but is pleased to see a debate on the civil war "after so many years of silence".
The law will not clear Baena's name. His sister faces the problem of double jeopardy - with no new evidence to present, she cannot return to court. "We would have to find the person who did it," she says, and more than three decades on that is not going to happen. Her lawyer has advised her that if the law passes in its current form she will have to take a case for clemency to the UN. "It's our last hope to clear his name," said Ms Baena.
