Resumen de El pasado como campo de batalla: lucha de memorias (2007-2008). De la Ley de Memoria Histórica a la iniciativa del juez Garzón
The strength of the social movement supporting the position that the victims of the military coup in July 1936 should not be consigned to oblivion finally managed to put historical memory on the political agenda, first in the elections and later in Congress after the triumph of the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Party) in 2004. However, it is the very inertia of recent history, along with the political peculiarities of the powers in the majority, which make it difficult for Spain to take on board the obscure past at the three levels that circumstances require: truth, justice and reparation. The “Law of Memory” of December 2007 constitutes a rather flimsy emergency exit for a long-standing problem which seems to have no way out. The judiciary process initiated by Judge Baltasar Garzón in September 2008, which raised such great expectations, has shown itself to be equally useless. The reality is that the big questions such as the locating and exhuming of the mass graves by the government, the pardoning of judicial-military Francoists, the anomalous situation of the military archives and the future of the Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen) continue to be pending issues. And the worst thing is that the solution is still out of sight, seventy-three years after the coup and nearly thirty-five years after the death of the dictator.
