New laws proposed by rightwing and far-right regional coalition governments to “whitewash” the Franco dictatorship could contravene international human rights standards, UN experts on truth, justice, forced disappearances and killings have warned Spain.
Two years ago, Spain’s socialist-led government introduced a Democratic Memory law designed to bring “justice, reparation and dignity” to the victims of the civil war and subsequent dictatorship.
The law, which built on previous socialist legislation, contains dozens of measures intended to help “settle Spanish democracy’s debt to its past”.
Among them were: the creation of a census and a national DNA bank to help locate and identify the remains of the tens of thousands of people who still lie in unmarked graves; a ban on groups that glorify the Franco regime; and a “redefinition” of the Valley of the Fallen, the giant basilica and memorial where Franco lay for 44 years until his exhumation in 2019.
The conservative People’s party (PP) and the far-right Vox party – which both opposed the law – have been attempting to replace it with “harmony laws” in three regions where they govern in coalition: Aragón, Castilla y León, and Valencia.
Critics of the harmony laws, including the national government and historical memory associations, have decried them as a blatant attempt to play down, justify or eradicate the horrors of the Franco era.
In a letter sent to the Spanish government at the end of April, three UN experts said the information they had received about the proposed laws “could affect the Spanish state’s obligations … when it comes to human rights, especially its obligation to guarantee the preservation of historical memory on serious human rights violations”.
The letter – signed by Fabián Salvioli, the special rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice and reparation, Aua Baldé, the chair of the working group on enforced or involuntary disappearances, and Morris Tidball-Binz, the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions – added: “We would urge the Spanish government to take all the necessary measures to guarantee the strict respect for international standards governing the preservation of historical memory on serious human rights violations.”
The experts said the harmony law proposed in Aragón could thwart public historical memory projects and paper over the serious human rights violations committed during the Franco dictatorship because it makes no mention or explicit criticism of the regime’s dictatorial nature. They also remarked on the fact that the new law would “suppress many historical memory associations and activities” and shut down the regional government’s historical memory web portal, which includes a map of mass graves.
They said the law put forward in Castilla y León did not use the word “dictatorship” in relation to the Franco era and did not expressly condemn the human rights violations carried out between the beginning of the civil war in 1936 and the return to democracy in 1978.
The trio said the law “would render the serious human rights violations committed during the Franco dictatorship invisible”.
They also said the law Vox was proposing in Valencia disregarded the hundreds of thousands of victims of the civil war and Francoism by referring to “all the victims of social, political and terrorist violence and of ideological and religious persecution”.
The experts reminded Spain that it had a duty to victims of forced disappearances.
“Not investigating and trying these violations is in itself a failure to fulfil the rules set out in human rights treaties,” they said. “Impunity over such violations can be an important factor in the repetition of those violations.”
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The Spanish government, which has said it will fight the harmony laws before the constitutional court, the UN, the European parliament and the Council of Europe, accused the PP and Vox of attempting to “whitewash Francoism and rewrite history”.
“The fact that the rapporteurs and working group have signed a joint letter shows how serious these violations are,” a government spokesperson said.
Emilio Silva, the president of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, which has spent more than two decades exhuming mass graves and campaigning for justice for Franco’s victims, welcomed the letter.
“The harmony laws are an attempt to whitewash Francoism and praise the dictatorship, which represents an act of aggression against its victims,” he said.
However, the PP regional president of Aragón criticised the experts. “What this report says is a lie,” said Jorge Azcón. “More seriousness was needed. This leaves the UN in a poor place.”
Juan García-Gallardo, the Vox vice-president of Castilla y León, insisted the new laws were intended to treat all victims equally. He also attacked the UN specialists.
“From the outset, you need to ask who these rapporteurs are, what they know about Spanish legislation and what they know about the real content of these laws, because what we’ve seen in the press displays a lot of misunderstanding,” he said.