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13 Macquarie L.J. 25 (2014)
Law, Memory and Amnesty in Spain

handle is hein.journals/macq13 and id is 33 raw text is: LAW, MEMORY AND AMNESTY IN SPAIN MICHAEL HUMPHREY* There are now memory laws in many European states against the denial of the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide as well as laws to regulate history curricula about slavery and colonialism. Laws explicitly addressing the memory of victims have also become a major focus of transitional justice mechanisms to manage political transition by recognising victims of human rights abuse in order to promote accountability and reconciliation. This article explores the role of law in regulating Civil War memory in Spain by looking at three laws the Amnesty Law 1939, the Amnesty Law 1977 and the Law of Historical Memory 2007. It argues that these laws reconstituted the political community based on an official collective memory, the selective recognition of victims and a political consensus. It argues that, while the Law of Historical Memory 2007 may have created new rights for families of the disappeared through global claim making, these rights have not been easy to realise. The surviving political influence of Francoists and public avoidance of Civil War memory as politically divisive, a legacy of the forgetting instituted by the Amnesty Law 19 77, has continued to present significant obstacles to the realisation of rights created by the Law of Historical Memory 2007. 1 INTRODUCTION This article is about law, the regulation of memory and justice. Its focus is the role of law in shaping collective memory of past violence. Political conflict over memory highlights the fact that (living) memory remains under the surface of law and sometimes becomes the object of laws.1 In Europe, the legislation of memory laws has recently been growing to defend the memory of historical victims of violence. There are now memory laws in many European states against the denial of the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide as well as laws to regulate history curricula about slavery and colonialism.2 Laws explicitly addressing the memory of victims have also become a major focus of transitional justice mechanisms to manage political transition by recognising victims of human rights abuse in order to promote accountability and reconciliation. This article examines law and the regulation of Civil War memory in Spain and the political * BA Hons, PhD (Macq); Professor Michael Humphrey holds a Chair in Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney. 1 Vivian Grosswald Curran, 'History, Memory and Law' (2011) 16 Roger Williams University Law Review 100. 2 Ibid 100-2.

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