(Source: Routledge)
Last year,
Routledge published a book on amnesty and pardons in the wake of Francoist
Spain
ABOUT THE BOOK
In a
consolidated democracy, amnesties and pardons do not sit well with equality and
a separation of powers; however, these measures have proved useful in extreme
circumstances, such as transitions from dictatorships to democracies, as has
occurred in Greece, Portugal and Spain. Focusing on Spain, this book analyses
the country's transition, from the antecedents from 1936 up to the present,
within a comparative European context. The amnesties granted in Greece, Portugal
and Spain saw the release of political prisoners, but in Spain amnesty was also
granted to those responsible for the grave violations of human rights which had
been committed for 40 years. The first two decades of the democracy saw copious
normative measures that sought to equate the rights of all those who had
benefitted from the amnesty and who had suffered or had been damaged by the
civil war. But, beyond the material benefits that accompanied it, this amnesty
led to a sort of wilful amnesia which forbade questioning the legacy of
Francoism. In this respect, Spain offers a useful lesson insofar as support for
a blanket amnesty – rather than the use of other solutions within a
transitional justice framework, such as purges, mechanisms to bring the dictatorship
to trial for crimes against humanity, or truth commissions – can be traced to a
relative weakness of democracy, and a society characterised by the fear of a
return to political violence. This lesson, moreover, is framed here against the
background of the evolution of amnesties throughout the twentieth century, and
in the context of international law. Crucially, then, this analysis of what is
now a global reference point for comparative studies of amnesties, provides new
insights into the complex relationship between democracy and the varying
mechanisms of transitional justice.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Roldán Jimeno is a Senior Lecturer in
Legal History at the Public University of Navarre, Spain.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
1 Background to
Francoist Spain: Granting pardons to the defeated in the war and enemies of the
regime
2 The beginnings
of the transition
3 The 1977
Amnesty Law and subsequent clemency measures
4 Amnesty during
the post-transition years (1982–2007)
5 Amnesty after
the Historical Memory Law (2007–2016)
Conclusion
More information
here
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