The Barcelona Court takes advantage of the 1977 amnesty to reject a complaint for Francoist torture on Via Layetana

Although those of against humanity does not prescribe, the magistrates refer to the amnesty of 77 which, “with the Constitution”, constituted “very important steps” to achieve the Transition. Concerning criminal forgetfulness, they emphasize that “it constituted an essential, irreplaceable and necessary pillar to defeat the Franco regime” and that “it also represented an important indicator for the various social actors, so that they accept certain measures to take in the establishment of the new regime, in a peaceful manner, avoiding a violent revolution and a return to confrontation.

The resolution therefore affects this, precisely because the Transition was “the will of the Spanish people, articulated in a law, no court or judge can, in any way, question the legitimacy of such a process“. Regarding the allusion to Democratic Memory Lawthat the plaintiffs and the public prosecutor used in separate appeals, since it establishes that the State will guarantee the right to investigate human rights violations, the judges emphasize that in reality, a State must protect victims, in particular “Yes. [los delitos que denuncian] They are of the same seriousness as those which could be qualified as crimes against humanity”, but this cannot be done “at the cost of a breakdown in legal certainty”.

They further argue that the right to research to which the Democratic Memory law alludes “can be satisfied outside the framework of criminal proceedings”. However, he refuses to investigate Ferrandiz’s complaint. The Irídia entity announced that it would appeal the Court’s decision, knowing that “the seriousness of the events [denunciados] requires a judicial response” which respects the victims’ rights to reparation.

Carles Vallejo

The same thing happened in the case of the political prisoner of the Franco regime. Carles Vallejowho filed the first complaint of torture at the Vía Layetana police station. The 18th Instruction Court of Barcelona filed the complaint he filed for crimes against humanity and torture against six agents of the Politico-Social Brigade in the 1970s, although the Prosecutor’s Office supported his confession, finding that “the new law of”. Democratic Memory imposes on the State, in the area of ​​justice, the duty to investigate human rights violations that occurred during the civil war and the dictatorship,” the instructor refused when she understood that the events were over and that they were amnestied by the “legislation in force” at that time, that is to say with the law of 1977.