White Terror (Spain) - Aftermath

Aftermath

The last concentration camp, at Miranda de Ebro, was closed in 1947. By the early 1950s the parties and trade unions made illegal by the Franco's dictatorship had been decimated by the Francoist police, and the Spanish maquis had ceased to exist as an organized resistance. Nevertheless, new forms of opposition started like the unrest in the universities and strikes in Barcelona, Madrid and Vizcaya. The 1960s saw the start of the labour strikes led by the illegal union trade Workers' Commissions (Comisiones Obreras), linked to the Communist Party of Spain and the protest in the universities continued to grow. Finally, with Franco's death in 1975, the Spanish transition to democracy commenced and in 1978 the Spanish Constitution of 1978 was approved.

After Franco's death the Spanish government approved an Amnesty Law (Ley de Amnistia de 1977) which granted pardon for all political crimes committed by the supporters of the dictatorship (including the White Terror) and by the democratic opposition. Nevertheless, in October 2008 a Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzón, of the National Court of Spain authorized, for the first time, an investigation into the disappearance and assassination of 114,000 victims of the dictatorship between 1936 and 1952. This investigation proceeded on the basis of the notion that this mass-murder constituted a Crime Against Humanity which cannot be subject to any amnesty or statute of limitations (as a result, in May 2010, Mr. Garzón was accused of violating the terms of the general amnesty and his powers as a jurist have been suspended pending further investigation). In September 2010, the Argentine justice reopened a probe into crimes committed during the Spanish Civil War and during the Franco's dictatorship. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch the Council of Europe and United Nations have asked the Spanish government to investigate the crimes of Franco's dictatorship.