WHAT KIND OF JUSTICE AND FOR WHICH VICTIMS?

A comprehensive overview of the victimisation caused by such a long and bloody dictatorship as that of the Franco regime is impossible. Presenting a topography of pain would require us to consider the full extent of largely irreversible human suffering as well as the social harm caused, the deadliest attacks on the human bonds on which a community is built, and the vacuum left by the disappeared and exiled. Referring strictly to individual victimisation, we should include in the balance not only the deaths, but also the pain suffered by the wounded and tortured. We also need to consider the psychological damage caused to people who lost their loved ones, those who did not know the fate of their relatives, the mothers who were deprived of their children and the children who were deprived of their parents or fraudulently and violently removed from them. There were also the exiles who were forced to spend long periods away from their families, and there was the transmission of trauma to subsequent generations. Finally, there were numerous economic losses, many of which were very difficult to repair, as well as the deprivation of property and the loss of opportunities.

Many forms of victimisation are impossible to measure, classify or quantify. Some are related to the humiliation caused by the victors’ persistent arrogance toward the vanquished, which took various forms of stigma and personal degradation, such as the denial of the status of being Spanish, discrimination as to who could enjoy the benefits of the regime, and a persistent climate of intimidation. Socially, the costs of such a large number of people being killed and exiled, and with university lecturers, judges and teachers being expelled from their jobs, were incalculable. As noted by Reyes Mate, political murders led not only to the physical disappearance of victims, but also to their “hermeneutic death” and the loss of basic foundations of social order.

Transitional processes share common problems, even though they are mediated by different national, historical and cultural features.