Seventy years ago a military uprising against the democratically elected Spanish government ( Spanish Second Republic ) led to three years of civil war followed by a forty year fascist dictatorship. New legislation, the Law of Historical Memory, is designed to address the losses and bring about closure. Not everyone is comfortable with this new law.

The calculations of casualties during the Spanish Civil War (1932-1935) are disputed, but at least 250,000 people died. There was no fence sitting during the war, sides were taken. On the right was General Francisco Franco fighting communism aided by Hitler's Germany , Mussolini's Italy and staunchly supported by conservative forces within the Roman Catholic Church. On the left were the Republicans who were half-heartedly supported by Soviet Russia, the international Communist movement, as well as the idealistic foreigners who came to fight fascism in the International Brigades.

When Franco died in 1975, a period known as the Transition began. This dictatorship to democracy period did not wish to once again divide the country. T he Spanish Socialist Worker's Party (PSOE), Spanish Communist Party (PCE) and the heirs of Franco's fascist party, the Popular Party (PP) agreed in 1978 that the civil war and the dictatorship would be subject to a “pact of silence.” Many feel this pact of silence benefited only one side and that the intended universal amnesty became a collective amnesia.

Despite the importance of the Civil War, one survey shows that 50% of Spaniards have not talked about it at home. In a gross simplification, there were winners and losers. Obviously, those who won the war enjoyed privileges that the losers, many exiled, imprisoned or marginalised did not. Children of the Republican forces particularly suffered.

The new law is meant to discuss the past without opening old wounds, but heal them instead. A grassroots movement is underway to identify the multitude of unmarked mass graves and exhume the remains, identifying them and giving closure to the families. In the province of Málaga there are an estimated thirty of these unidentified mass graves. In Málaga capital alone there are four in the old San Rafael Cemetery . A General Archive of the Spanish Civil War was established by Royal Decree in 1999 with its headquarters Salamanca to “recover, collect, organize and put at the disposition of interested parties, documentary resources and secondary sources which may be of interest for the study of the Civil War, the Franco dictatorship, the guerrilla resistance against it, the exile, the internment of Spaniards in concentration camps during the Second World War and the transition.”

One of the most long lasting and polemic icons of General Franco's legacy is the Valley of the Fallen ( el Valle de los Caídos ), a colossal tomb built between 1940-1958 by Republican and leftist prisoners. There are many ideas about what this symbolic monument's fate should be: some want to turn it over to the Catholic Church as a place of worship while others want to see it converted into an education centre about fascism.

One summer evening, an Ojén friend of mine commented, “How can I truly know you if I haven't met your grandparents?” Sitting in the village square, he proceeded to tell me the political orientation of each local pedestrian, followed by that person's parents' or grandparents' affiliations during the war. He would arch his eye brows and say, “This one is a socialist”, then add in a lower voice, “fascist grandfather.” It wasn't too difficult to pick up on what he was saying. This interlude made me realise, that although the civil war is not a common topic of discussion, it is ubiquitously in the shadows. Atrocities were committed by both sides and the subject of the civil war is still tender in the nation's psyche.

Article 1. Objective of the Law .

This Law has as its objective the recognition and extension of rights in favour of those who suffered persecution or violence, for political or ideological reasons, during the Civil War or the Dictatorship, to promote their moral redress and the recovery of their personal and family memory, and to adopt complementary measures designed to suppress elements of division between citizens, all this with the object of fostering cohesion and solidarity between the various generations of Spaniards with respect to principles, values and constitutional liberties.

Full text of the draft law in English:

http://www.derechos.org/nizkor/espana/doc/draftlaw.html

Orwell volunteered to fight for the Republicans against Franco's Nationalist uprising.

George Orwell quote: “I have little direct evidence about the atrocities in the Spanish civil war. I know that some were committed by the Republicans, and far more (they are still continuing) by the Fascists. But what impressed me then, and has impressed me ever since, is that atrocities are believed in or disbelieved in solely on grounds of political predilection. Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence.”