Justice is dead in Spain. All of the church bells in Spain should toll, calling everyone to its funeral. Like in the story by Saramago about the Florentine peasant, the unrighteous continue to triumph, controlling the Supreme Court, the Government and the Parliament in Spain.
The Supreme Court judges who haven’t made the transition to democracy are squeezing the life out of the law. They rid themselves prevaricatorily of the fairest of all judges, Garzón, and, impose silence and impunity through intimidation.
They invoke the rule of law and in the name of this principle, other judges have refused to extradite to Argentina two torturers under the Franco regime. The dead will remain dead, lying in mass graves, and the rights of hundreds of thousands of victims are thrown into the larger mass grave of the Spanish judicial system.
In Argentina, grandmothers have been searching for their grandchildren for more than 35 years and in Spain, grandchildren want to know what happened to their grandparents. Who tortured them, who murdered them, where are their bodies? What happened to the 30,000 children kidnapped by the dictatorship? What happened to the more than 150,000 people who disappeared and were taken out for a nighttime stroll to be liberated? Why hasn’t the truth been told, why hasn’t justice been served, why have no reparations been made? Franco died 40 years ago but has never really been buried. He lives on in monuments and street names, and, even worse, continues to live through Phalangists who call themselves democrats, passing laws and judgements.
Servini is working on a universal jurisdiction case in Argentina involving 300 Spanish victims as complainants. She wants to get statements from each and every one of them before they all die off in silence, forgotten by their own State. Fifteen of them went to Buenos Aires, but she decided to go to Spain in a rogatory commission. She’s traveling paradoxically at the same moment in which the Government and Parliament in power decreed the death of universal justice, from which the Argentinian people benefited when Scilingo was convicted and when the extradition of State terrorists was requested.
Spain was a frontrunner in making use of universal jurisdiction, which allowed for judges to prosecute international crimes even when none of the victims were Spanish. Cases were brought in regard to Chile, Argentina, Guatemala, Sahara, Tibet, Rwanda, Palestine, Guantanamo, Iraq and others. The 2009 reform required bringing only cases in which Spaniards were victims, the alleged perpetrators were in Spain or in which there was a relevant link to Spain or Spanish interests. And the cases remained pending.
Universal jurisdiction is dying under the weight of further restrictions imposed by the 2014 reform. The party in power does not want Spanish judges to be involved in any extraterritorial action, even if there are Spanish victims involved, except in cases of terrorism. In addition to the victims of the Franco regime, this deprives Spanish victims in any part of the world of their right to access to legal remedies, leaving its citizens without recourse in the face of international crimes perpetrated against people involved in humanitarian and solidarity causes, abandoning journalists who are carrying out their duty to inform the public.
But those who determine the fate of Spain do not even respect their own laws, to the embarrassment of the Spanish people and to the general repudiation of the world.
This was also the case back when they used the amnesty law to sweep the brutalities of the Franco regime under the carpet, although a number of UN committees which bind the Spanish State have repeatedly and insistently called upon it so rescind this law. The so-called Spanish Historical Remembrance Law of 2007 to provide reparations to victims of crimes perpetrated by the dictatorship, has not been implemented because, it is claimed, there is no money to do so. Meanwhile, the judges who have dared to fulfill these obligations as well as the international human rights obligations of Spain, run the risk of continued persecution by that very State.
In these bad times for justice in Spain, we need to make special mention of Judge Baltasar Garzón, who will always be a judge in the grateful memory of the people; Emeritus Magistrate of the Supreme Court Martin Pallín and those who, from the Spanish National High Court -José Ricardo de Prada, Fernando Andreu and Santiago Pedraz, among others- continue to live up to their status as judges by refusing to pander to impunity, when their conscience and the law dictate that they tackle international crimes, no matter how powerful the perpetrators of these crimes may be.
In the same way we must acknowledge public prosecutors such as Dolores Delgado who addresses these challenges alone, and José María Mena who never gives up; and an exceptional group of jurists including Joan Garcés, Manuel Ollé, Almudena Bernabéu, Carlos Slepoy and Enrique Santiago among others who, working side by side with victims, particularly those of the Franco regime, will breathe new life into Spain’s justice system. When that happens the bells will no longer toll for a crippled Spain, destroyed by the hand of fascism, but rather will ring in a new world in which impunity will be eradicated. To make that day come, we shall continue, just like Judge Servini, to do all that is necessary so that justice can continue on its journey.