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Franco inquiry polarises SpainA top Spanish investigative judge has launched a criminal
investigation into the fate of tens of thousands of people who
vanished during the country's civil war and General Francisco Franco'
dictatorship.
The BBC's Steve Kingstone in Madrid weighs up the aftershocks of a
seismic decision by Judge Baltasar Garzon.
Love him or hate him - and few Spaniards are indifferent - Mr Garzon
is a genuine superstar.
The 52-year-old investigating magistrate is rarely out of the news: in
a glittering judicial career, he has pursued Eta, al-Qaeda, and
alleged human rights abusers in South America - most famously, Chile's
late dictator Augusto Pinochet.
Supporters see him as a fearless crusader; critics portray the judge
as an egotist, who craves media attention.
But now, this polarising figure has embarked on the most contentious
crusade of all by, in effect, sitting in judgement on the regime of
Gen Franco, who ruled Spain for almost four decades until his death in
1975.
The principal allegation is that Gen Franco, together with 34 senior
aides, oversaw a systematic campaign to eliminate their left-wing
opponents. Mr Garzon characterises this as a "crime against humanity".
'Genocide'
In an exhaustive 68-page edict, the judge refers to 114,000 alleged
victims who "disappeared" over a 15-year period, following Gen
Franco's military uprising against the elected Second Republic
government in July 1936.
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Many are said to have been summarily executed during the brutal civil
war, which Franco's Nationalist forces won in March 1939; others were
murdered later, as the general consolidated his power.
"The fight against this scar, this impunity will never cease," Mr
Garzon told me at a recent book launch - speaking in general terms
about crimes against humanity.
"And if we're referring to the investigations in Spain about past
eras, then justice must follow its course."
Many seasoned academics share Mr Garzon's historical perspective, and
some go even further in their choice of language.
"It was virtually genocide," says the Madrid-based historian Ian Gibson.
"It came from the top, it was systematic, and they had planned it
before the war began. Documents exist showing that, if the coup
failed, they would set in motion this policy of extermination, " Mr
Gibson says.
'End to silence'
The most immediate effect of Mr Garzon's dramatic intervention will be
the opening of 19 mass graves, believed to contain the remains of
missing victims.
Such excavations are not new in Spain, but until now they have been
organised on an ad hoc basis, by relatives of the dead and volunteer
archaeologists.
"For many people, the intervention of Garzon means an end to silence
and fear," explains Emilio Silva, who unearthed the remains of his
grandfather eight years ago, and today runs the Association for the
Recovery of Historic Memory.
"Many families are now contacting us for the first time... some are
sending information about killers who are still alive today. This is
not a political question anymore - we're talking about justice," Mr
Silva says.
The prospect of elderly men - now well into their 90s and above -
facing prosecution is, for the first time, conceivable.
Spain's interior ministry has said it will co-operate with a request
from Mr Garzon to supply details of any surviving senior members of
the Spanish Fascist Party (Falange) who are alleged to have carried
out summary executions in Gen Franco's name.
'Nonsense'
Unsurprisingly, Mr Garzon's actions have unleashed an almighty storm
from opponents who accuse him of playing God.
"He must be the only Spaniard who hasn't heard that Franco is dead,"
joked Senator Augustin Conde of the conservative opposition People's
Party (PP), lambasting the fact that Mr Garzon had requested
documentary proof of the Gen Franco's passing.
Manuel Fraga, the PP's 85-year-old founder and a former minister under
Gen Franco, called the ruling "nonsense, a very serious mistake";
while the right-leaning El Mundo newspaper fumed that Mr Garzon was
"neither morally nor mentally capable of judging anyone".
Intriguingly, Spanish state prosecutors are among the dissenters, and
have appealed against Mr Garzon's right to address the historical
controversy.
They argue that his intervention violates the 1977 Amnesty Law, which
pardoned politically- motivated crimes by Gen Franco's friends and foes
alike. By guaranteeing that the past would not be raked over, the law
underpinned Spain's delicate transition from dictatorship to democracy.
We should not disturb the dead... and his [Lorca's] fame should serve
to protect that place
Laura Lorca
Federico Garcia Lorca's niece
Others have more personal reasons for opposing the judge - notably the
family of the Francoists' most famous victim, the celebrated poet
Federico Garcia Lorca, who was murdered in August 1936.
Together with thousands of other victims, his remains are thought to
be buried in the southern province of Granada, at a site which Mr
Garzon has ordered excavated.
"We don't think finding the remains would add anything to his already
well-known biography," explains Laura Lorca, the poet's niece.
"We should not disturb the dead... and his fame should serve to
protect that place," she says.
The Lorca family also has practical concerns about a potential
exhumation of victims.
"It would be very difficult to avoid it being turned into a media
spectacle," says Laura, "there are a lot of people who would be after
the image of those remains."
But relatives of other victims disagree, arguing that Mr Garzon is
simply displaying the same rigour towards domestic history which
Spanish judges have shown in international human rights cases, under
the principle of "universal justice".
"People should pay for their crimes," says Mr Silva. "It's the same
whether it's in Spain, Argentina, Chile or Serbia. Spain shouldn't be
different."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news. bbc.co.uk/ go/pr/fr/ -/2/hi/europe/ 7679457.stmPublished: 2008/10/20 10:20:48 GMT
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