Historical Memory Law


Law 52/2007 That recognises and broadens the rights and establishes measures in favour of those who suffered persecution or violence during the Civil War and the Dictatorship, commonly known as Historical Memory Law, is a Spanish law passed by the Congress of Deputies on 31 October 2007. It was based on a bill proposed by the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party government of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. The Historical Memory Law principally recognizes the victims on both sides of the Spanish Civil War, gives rights to the victims and the descendants of victims of the Civil War and the subsequent dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, and formally condemns the Franco Regime. The conservative Popular Party and the Republican Left of Catalonia both voted against passage of the law but for different reasons. For its no vote the Popular Party accused the Socialist Party government of weakening the political consensus of the transition to democracy and "using the Civil War as an argument for political propaganda", while the Republican Left of Catalonia rejected the law on the basis it did not go far enough.

Provisions

The main provisions of the law are:
Criticism of the law has come from two sides, those who think that the law is not effective enough and those who support the Pact of forgetting.
Doubt has been expressed about how effective the law is as a means of obtaining retroactive justice. Republican Left of Catalonia, the left wing and Catalan nationalist party, opposed the law for not overturning verdicts reached by judges in political trials conducted during the Francoist State, although the new legislation did declare these trials illegitimate.
Another example of the limits placed on judicial activity is what happened in 2008 when Judge Baltasar Garzón opened a national investigation into Franco and his allies. He dropped the investigation the same year after state prosecutors questioned his jurisdiction over Francoist crimes. In a 152-page statement, he passed responsibility to regional courts for opening 19 mass graves believed to hold the remains of hundreds of victims.
Subsequently, a Spanish court upheld the 1977 Amnesty Law, declaring that Garzón had opened the investigation without proper authority.
Members of the conservative Popular Party have tended to support the Amnesty Law, arguing that the Historical Memory Law goes against the spirit of Spain's transition to democracy.
For example, while in opposition the leader of the Popular Party Mariano Rajoy claimed that Garzón's attempt to compile a list of victims would needlessly open up old wounds. However, the Popular Party did offer support for some elements of the Historical Memory Law, including seven amendments to the original text of the law, facilitating the "depoliticisation" of the Valle de los Caídos and monetary aid to victims of the Civil War and Franco regime.

Implementation of the Law

The conservative Popular Party government of Mariano Rajoy, which was in power from 2011 until 2018, neither repealed nor amended the Historical Memory Law. The Centro Documental de la Memoria Histórica provided information on victims of Francoist repression, but the government curtailed State help in the exhumation of victims.