Even more forgotten

The Spanish Foreign Ministry has finally managed to prevent some people who were punished during Franco's dictatorships and relatives of other victims from giving their testimonies before Argentinian judge María Servini de Cumbría, who was appointed to launch a probe on those crimes after a lawsuit was filled by several victims in the country in 2010. In fact, the ministry issued a note of protest to the Argentinian Embassy in Spain, claiming that such an action supposed a vulneration of diplomatic treaties between both countries and thus the statements "could be invalid and vulnerate the rights of Spanish citizens". So that, Servini decided to suspend the video conferences in which three relatives of people murdered during the dictatorship were to provide their declarations. Those who have been affected by such a decision are Mercè (or Merçona) Puig Antich, Fausto Canales and Pablo Mayoral.
Like many other people, they sought justice in Argentina after the most mediatic Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón tried unsuccessfully to get those crimes punished, being even prosecuted because of such an investigation. He is currently the lawyer of Julian Assange and has his figure has been controversial over his role in the persecution of Basque, Catalan and Galician separatist movements over the last years.  

Merçona Puig Antich is the youngest sister of Salvador Puig Antich, a Catalan militant from the left-wing organization MIL (Movimiento Ibérico de Liberación) who was executed on 2 March 1974 for having allegedly murder a police officer during a shooting which left Salvador seriously injured. Even though during the martial court which tried him some circumstances of the incident were unclear and the fact that Puig Antich could have murdered anyone while being injured was unlikely, he was condemned to death penalty. In fact, he and Heinz Chez were the two last detainees being executed trought the garrotte.

Pablo Mayoral is a former FRAP member who was about to be executed in 1975, after a martial trial sentenced him and other fellow militants to death penalty. However, his sentence was changed hours before the execution and he had to serve a 30 year prison term instead. Others like Xosé Humberto Baena were finally shot to death only two months before Franco died.

Fausto Canales is the son of a man who was executed by a gang of falangists during the Civil War alongside other Republicans from his town. His corpse was later transferred to the mausoleum called Valle de Los Caídos, where Franco's remains were buried. His family was never warned that their relative's remains would lie alongside the dictator.

These are three different stories which are not uncommon in Spain. Stories of sorrow, repression and oblivion. The heirs of those who ruled during the dictatorship do not want people to remember, neither to ask for justice. They claim that doing so would reopen old wounds and break up a peaceful society which was built during the Transition. But the reality is that no transition took place: the current powers are the same who ruled during the dictatorship, nothing changed. Even the king was directly appointed by Franco and swore the Principios Fundamentales del Movimiento Nacional (Fundamental Principles of the National Movement), different laws which had been configurating Francoism since 1958. Meanwhile, the corpses of thousands of people who were executed either with or without any trial lie in massgraves all around the country, but there are no funds to fundraise their exhumation and identifications. Neither is there a real willingness to repair the pain they suffered after decades of punishment, repression and negation of their suffering. The victims have not been allowed to make an account of the grievances they suffered because of a law issued by Spain at the beginning of the transition.

Spanish government claims that the Amnesty Law issued in 1977 was applied to all the people who had been sentenced during the previous years, but the truth is that their sentences had never been canceled. Nobody paid for the dozens of unfair political trials and executions. Even though the relatives of some victims have tried to get these crimes punished, only a few of them have managed to. Dozens of others remain unpunished like the execution of Catalan president Lluís Companys i Jover, who was sentenced to death penalty after a council of war in 1940. In fact, he was the only democratically elected president in Europe to have been executed.

Given those circumstances, does a State like that have any legitimacy to rule the lives of their citizens? Would it have the right to prevent any attempts by Basques or Catalans to regain their independence? Is Spain a true democracy?