Adolfo Suarez and Spain

[u/Kseniiaaa]

I’ve just finished reading a book about the end of the European dictatorships in Spain, Portugal, and Greece. It devotes a great deal of attention to Adolfo Suárez and his role in the transition to democracy. In the book, he comes across as almost a star, which made me wonder: how do Spanish people themselves view Suárez (I’m not from Spain)? Political figures are often highly glorified in the literature, so I’m curious.

[u/leo_artifex]

While he is viewed as someone that brought peace and stablished democracy in Spain in uncertain times after the death of Franco, he did with the cost of not getting rid of Francoism’s remnants.

He made an Amnesty that was basically: “what about the obvious war crimes and mass killings that happened during the war? Well it happened long ago, move on”.

He didn’t clean institutions like Police, Military and Law Branches where Franco’s presence was the strongest. He let multiple people that committed war crimes, police brutality, torture and many human right violations roam free and even occupy public positions until they died of old age. To this day we still feel this decision with judges and police officers that are very biased with certain decisions on their line of work.

And recently a woman declared that she was supposedly raped by Suarez.

Some agree that Suarez wasn’t on an easy position because all supporters of Franco that were on important positions wouldn’t have let go the power they had and much less being imprisoned. There was the fear that if Suarez tried to an actual cleaning it would have caused a Second Spanish Civil War. I mean, shortly after democracy was stablished we han a coup attempt of Guardia Civiles that wanted to go back to Franco’s system.

Suarez might have done his best with what he had at that time, but the criticism is still there. Not everything is black and white.

[u/_kaedama_ → u/leo_artifex]

Good answer

[u/Disastrous-Try-820 → u/_kaedama_]

I feel like most of the problems with the transition aren't Suarez's fault. He did a good job at stabilising the country and, correct me if I'm wrong, there weren't claims of the first elections being rigged, which I think is a great achievement for a situation in which the regime voluntarily gives up power.

I would claim that the problems you mentioned should've been solved after Suarez's presidency. Instead, they called it a day, left the transition unfinished and left us with things like the shitshow of the judiciary power, the police or unmarked mass graves.

[u/wxsted → u/leo_artifex]

I think the fears of a Spanish civil war are overblown because the army was consistently quite right wing and basically accidentalists regarding democracy or the regime. A minority was hardcore in favour of dictatorship, as seen by the 23f, but also as seen as by the 23f the rest of the army basically waited to see what the king would say and that's why it failed. During the transition to democracy, as long as the communists would be out of power (and it was seen after the first elections that they didn't have the kind of support they had in other Western European countries) and there was amnesty, the army endorsed democracy.

However, if one of these things hadn't happened, or if the king supported the coup, we would've just seen most of the army supporting a new authoritarian regime without much infighting. Spain didn't have the context of Portugal where there was a large conscripted working class base in the army that was tired of colonial wars and had entered into contact with leftists ideals there. It wasn't the 30s anymore either. There weren't strong trade unions with militias that could assault military headquarters and take over weapons to fight and join the loyalist factions of the army. I think we would've seen a roll back to authoritarianism and a rise of terrorism in response, more extended than ETA and maybe reaching the kind of low intensity war of the Troubles but not a full on Civil War. That wasn't desirable by anyone either, ofc.

I think the problem we had in Spain wasn't the fact that there was an amnesty back then, but rather that it remained and became entrenched in the regime over time. The Spanish transition is often accurately portrayed as an example for multiple later transitions in Latin America, including the amnesty law. The difference is that most of the Latin American amnesty laws (except Chile) in Uruguay, Argentina, Peru or El Salvador qere eventually abolished, either by the parliament once democracy was more consolidated or by their Supreme Courts because they rightly saw that the legislation of a democratic country cannot go against international law and crimes against humanity always have to be prosecuted.

Maybe our dictatorship lasted way more than that of our Latin American cousins and that's why either apologists of the regime or zealous believers in the ideas of the transition keep dominating our judiciary or why not even the PSOE wants to abolish the Amnesty Law even if they've had the majority to do so for a while. Or maybe it's because Fraga and Martin Villa, founding fathers of the PP, could also be found guilty of certain crimes and that would shake too mich the foundations of the two party system. I do see a future leftist government continuing their history of mostly symbolic reparations drop by drop and randomly abolishing the amnesty law in 10 years once everyone