For those of you not familiar with this name, Judge Baltazar Garzón is a Spanish judge who dared to try to bring to justice the crimes committed during the dictatorship that desolated Spain for almost 40 years between 1939 and 1975. Some of you might know him as the judge who prosecuted Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
Well, today, Judge Garzón has been condemned. He will be suspended of his functions for the next 11 years, and also expelled from the Spanish judiciary system, therefore the dictatorship crimes will remain umpunished. Why? The Spanish Supreme Court found Garzón guilty of violating lawyer-client priviledges by recording conversations between detained suspects and their lawyers, while investigating a case of corruption in politicians associated to the ruling political party in Spain.
I don't know enough about this accusation to pronounce myself about it, but many agree in Spain that the sentence has an ulterior motive . The Spanish de facto powers were clearly afraid of Judge Garzón and how far he could get investigating the dictatorship crimes. Therefore, the easy way was stopping Garzón before he could get too far. The last opportunity to punish the Francoist regime seems to evaporate. They won. Sad but true Spain is different.
This is very sad. I'm reading Gregorio Moran's El precio de la transicion right now and it's becoming more and more clear to me that without some sort of a public reckoning for the crimes of the Franco era, we cannot expect anything good in Spain.
ReplyDeleteYou are so right. They say that Spain is different, but nothing changes for the Spaniards.
ReplyDelete