Spain
In 1977, immediately after the democratic elections that followed the death of General Francisco Franco, Spain’s parliament enacted an Amnesty Law lifting sanctions against opponents of the dictatorship and at the same time shielding officials of the regime from prosecution for human rights violations.
The “Pact of Forgetting,” one of the pillars of the Transition to Democracy, enjoyed broad support for a generation. However, this began to be challenged when the Socialist Government steered the Historical Memory Act through parliament in 2007.
The Law required the central government to facilitate the process of locating, exhuming and identifying victims of Francoist repression whose remains are still missing, often buried in mass graves. State-level facilitation consisted mainly of providing financial resources to organizations such as local NGOs and academic institutions to locate and exhume mass graves. The Law further provided for the authorities to prepare and publish a map showing the locations of all discovered mass graves. Some autonomous communities, including Andalusia and Catalonia, for example, assumed responsibility for these processes.
The Law on Historical Memory was replaced in 2022 by the Law on Democratic Memory, which extends the obligations of the state in addressing crimes and atrocities committed during the Civil War and the Franco era. The new law enshrines the right of relatives to know what happened during the war and dictatorship. It establishes the obligation and leadership of the state to search for and identify the missing, and provides for the creation of a national DNA database for victims of the war and dictatorship. The Law also enshrines the right to an effective investigation for violations of human rights during the war and the dictatorship.
Although investigations into cases of missing or disappeared persons continue to be limited due to the amnesty law of October 1977, which remains in effect, the new Law on Democratic Memory is regarded as a significant step forward in meeting Spain’s responsibilities regarding missing persons.
International legal instruments
Spain is a state party to the major international human rights instruments including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), and the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT). It has signed the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED) and the European Convention on Human Rights. It became a party to the Rome Statute in 2000.
Constitutional framework
The Spanish Constitution guarantees the protection of a broad range of human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the right to life and to physical and moral integrity, prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading punishment or treatment, the right to liberty and security, the right to honor, to personal and family privacy and equality before the law.
