Spain’s Memory Law Hasn’t Banished the Ghosts of Francoism

Spain’s Memory Law Hasn’t Banished the Ghosts of Francoism

Spain’s Law of Democratic Memory was meant to end official silence over the Spanish Civil War and shed light on Franco-era crimes. But right-wing parties are using their power to ensure the truth remains buried.

The jurist closes his trilogy on Nazi crimes with 'Calle Londres 38' (Anagram), a reflection on impunity where he reveals details of the Pinochet case and follows the lead of an escaped SS officer to Patagonia Read

The jurist and writer visits Barcelona to present 'Calle Londres 38', a monumental work on the Chilean dictatorship, the failed extradition of Pinochet to Spain and the impunity of the autocratsHemeroteca - Joan Garcés: “The Chilean media campaign financed in part by the CIA was key to achieving the military coup” “Are they Communists?” The question was launched by a Chilean police officer, in the middle of 2021, to the jurist and writer Philipp…

Veteran journalist Federico Jiménez Losantos today headlines his column in Digital Freedom as “Prohibiting the Francisco Franco Foundation would be a return to dictatorship”, published on April 27, 2025. In it, he launches a harsh criticism against legislative attempts to outlaw the Francoist entity, warning that this legal drift not only does not combat the past, but endangers the fundamental principles of Spanish democracy. The article begins …

This law is not against Franco but against freedom and Spain

The heartbreaking lament of Antigona against Creon and that Angel of History for whom progress was the banditry that entangled in his wings and prevented him from launching to rebuild the ruins of the past, on which Benjamin wrote, cross in When Antigona found Benjamin: victims of Francoism and the right to memory, by Rafael Escudero Alday (Trotta, 2025): a book on the difficult Spanish effort to pursue the trial and reparation of the crimes of …