Spain’s willingness to ‘forget’ a useful lesson for SA
ASHORT holiday in Spain threw up plenty to catch the eye of an observant South African. “No Fracking” graffiti was everywhere; they’ve banned Uber; unemployment levels are similar to ours at 25 percent; and they are mightily concerned about their macroeconomic position (as we are, or should be) while continually protesting that “Spain is not Greece”.
They have two populist movements on the rise (Podemos and Cuidadanos) which, like the EFF, threaten to break the two party mould; and the almost exact Spanish translation of The Second Transition, which ANC policy debates revolve around, is getting plenty of airplay.
Most intriguing for me was to read about the way that Spain wrestles with its brutal past or, to be more accurate, its very deliberate unwillingness to do so.
The Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939 was a bitter and lethal conflict – at least half a million Spaniards died – and it resulted in 36 years of thinly disguised dictatorship from the Nationalist victor Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Those who had supported the vanquished Republican cause went into exile, went silent or were repressed.
The scars from all that, you would think, run very deep but when Franco died in 1975 and Spain opened itself to democracy, the new Socialist government and the old order agreed on what is called
El Pacto del Olvido, the pact of silence or of forgetting.
With this pact the leadership of both sides of the political divide agreed to bury troublesome history with an instant blanket amnesty and no investigations.
This amoral agreement within the establishment was bitterly opposed by many in the Republican rank and file who felt their former enemies were getting away with murder and torture, but it has been scrupulously honoured even in the face of UN criticism that it contravenes international law on war crimes.
There are commentators who believe this controversial pact was the essential foundation of the explosive economic and social growth of the ’80s and ’90s, which catapulted Spain into the stylish, modern and prosperous society which it has become (even if, as the current fiscal crisis shows, they probably couldn’t afford it) because by not looking back they were able to look forward.
Direct comparisons between this approach and the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the continuing debates about accountability for our past are invalid as apartheid represented a minority exerting racial superiority over the majority while Spain’s civil war was a nation divided down the middle in open conflict.
It’s inconceivable in every way – politically, economically, socially and morally – that the ANC could have swept the slate completely clean through executive fiat in 1994, but, at some point in our future journey, an unofficial Pacto de Olvido might have some pragmatic merit.