Table Of ContentSt Antony’s Series
Series Editors: Halbert Jones and
Matthew Walton
REVEALING NEW
TRUTHS ABOUT SPAIN’S
VIOLENT PAST
Perpetrators’ Confessions
and Victim Exhumations
Paloma Aguilar
and Leigh A. Payne
St Antony’s Series
Series Editors
Halbert Jones
St Antony’s College
University of Oxford
Oxford , United Kingdom
Matthew Walton
St Antony’s College
University of Oxford
Oxford , United Kingdom
Published in association with St Antony’s College, Oxford.
More information about this series at
http://www.springer.com/series/15036
Paloma A guilar • L eigh A. Payne
Revealing New Truths
about Spain’s Violent
Past
Perpetrators’ Confessions and Victim Exhumations
Paloma Aguilar Leigh A. Payne
Departamento de Ciencia Política St Antony’s College
UNED University of Oxford
Madrid , Spain Oxford , United Kingdom
St Antony’s Series
ISBN 978-1-137-56228-9 ISBN 978-1-137-56229-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56229-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016938642
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2 016
The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identifi ed as the author(s) of this work
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This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
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The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
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Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature
The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London
For their constant support, friendship, and love, we dedicate this book to
our husbands, Jesús Cuéllar and Stephen Meili. We also dedicate it to our
parents, Susa Fernández, Ángel Aguilar, and Donald and Adrah Payne,
for stimulating our intellectual curiosity and for their enduring warmth.
S P A
ELECT UBLICATIONS BY THE UTHORS
Aguilar, P. (2008) Políticas de la memoria y memorias de la política .
Madrid: Alianza Editorial.
Payne, L. A. (2008) Unsettling accounts: neither truth nor reconcilia-
tion in confessions of state violence . Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
vii
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
A much shorter and considerably modifi ed version of this text appears as
a chapter with the title “Unsettling Bones, Unsettling Accounts: Spanish
Perpetrators’ Confessions to Violence” in the book L egacies of Violence
in Contemporary Spain: Exhuming the Past, Understanding the Present ,
edited by Ofelia Ferrán and Lisa Hilbink (New York: Routledge Studies in
Modern European History, 2017). We thank the editors of that volume
and Routledge for permission to expand on those ideas in book form. We
received invaluable commentary, information, and insights in the prepara-
tion of this book, for which we are exceedingly grateful, especially to Ángel
Alcalde, Peter P. Anderson, Montserrat Armengou, Laura Bernal, Julián
Casanova, Jesús Cuéllar, Francisco Espinosa, Aitor Fernández, Ofelia
Ferrán, Francisco Ferrándiz, Guillermo Fouce, Lisa Hilbink, Santos Juliá,
Mercè Lázaro, José Luis Ledesma, Antonio D. López, Miguel Martorell,
Stephen Meili, Francisco Moreno, Diego Palacios, Stanley Payne, Paul
Preston, Alberto Reig, Emilio Silva, and Queralt Solé. We thank Nicola
Stapleton for her help with the index and other fi nal details. Angharad
Bishop, Rowan Milligan, and Emily Russell at Palgrave Macmillan were
responsive and attentive at every stage of the process. Finally, we thank
Paul Betts, the former St Antony’s Series editor, for his encouragement.
ix
C
ONTENTS
1 Introduction 1
2 Unsettling Accounts 23
3 Heroic Historic Confessions 35
4 Few, Fleeting, and Fugitive Confessions 43
5 Unsettling the Balance 5 7
6 Preposterous Denial 67
7 Unsettling Bones as Unsettling Accounts 7 5
8 Conclusion 8 9
Bibliography 9 5
Index 105
xi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Abstract Spain’s transition from authoritarian rule to democracy – built
on the foundation of amnesty and oblivion – was once seen as a model.
That model has been challenged around the world and replaced with the
demand for justice for and truth about past atrocity. This chapter examines
the Spanish transition. It refl ects on some of the underlying misconcep-
tions behind the transitional processes and the limitations they imposed
in advancing the goals of truth, reparations, and justice adopted in other
parts of the world.
It is often forgotten these days that Spain was once viewed as a model tran-
sition from authoritarian rule to democracy. Its most praised characteristics
were the peaceful and successful transition resulting from moderation and
compromise. Spain succeeded in stabilizing a democratic regime, some-
thing that many observers thought unlikely at that moment. Yet, in the
current global context, with its emphasis on accountability for past human
rights abuses, Spain has begun to be seen instead as a relic, a throwback to
an era in which peace and democratic stability were thought to depend on
amnesty, silence, and oblivion, rather than on justice and truth.
Few recent transitions have followed Spain’s pathway of blanket
amnesty for perpetrators without even the creation of a truth commission.
In this book we examine the processes that led to that distinctive outcome.
© The Author(s) 2016 1
P. Aguilar, L.A. Payne, Revealing New Truths about Spain’s Violent Past,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56229-6_1
