With a last-minute concession to the Roman Catholic Church, the Spanish parliament Wednesday passed a landmark bill that condemns the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco and makes restitution to its victims.The legislation represents a groundbreaking attempt by Spain to come to terms with a dark and still-disputed chapter of its recent history.
The Law of Historical Memory, approved Wednesday by the lower house of parliament, will expand benefits to victims of Spain's 1936-39 civil war and nearly four decades of Franco-led dictatorship that followed.
It still must go before the Senate, but approval there is considered a formality. Right-wing opposition politicians stubbornly fought the law, arguing it reopened wounds that would further divide the country.
"Nothing could be further from the truth," declared Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega as she opened Wednesday's parliamentary session. The legislation, she said, "is something that we can all support."
The Socialist government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero -- whose grandfather was among thousands executed by Franco's forces -- maintains that although Franco backers who suffered during the war have been honored and compensated, those who opposed him were repressed, persecuted and never received justice.
Backed by the Catholic Church, Franco and his fascist supporters staged a military coup in 1936 to overthrow the elected leftist Republican government, triggering the civil war that many regard as a precursor to World War II.
Franco ruled until his death in 1975, after which Spain underwent a transition to democracy that included a political pact to ignore the past.
Among the key points of the legislation:
* Sentences handed down by kangaroo courts during the dictatorship, which sent thousands of dissidents and opponents of the regime to jail, will be formally declared "illegitimate."
* Local governments must help locate, exhume and identify the bodies of victims from mass graves. Tens of thousands of Republican partisans are believed to be buried in clandestine common graves throughout the country, their fates never officially established.
* Demonstrations are banned at El Valle de los Caidos, or the Valley of the Fallen, a mausoleum and tourist attraction where Franco is buried, sometimes used for fascist rallies.
* Spaniards who lost citizenship after the dictatorship forced them into exile can regain it; descendants of exiles will be allowed to apply for citizenship during a two-year period.
* Plaques, statues and other symbols honoring Franco "or statements in exaltation of the military uprising, the civil war or the repression of the dictatorship" must be removed from public view.
It is here that legislators made a last-minute amendment at the behest of the church, which asserted "artistic-religious" reasons for maintaining plaques that honor priests and nuns who fell victim to Republican forces.
Many of these commemorations contain the insignia of Franco and the fascists.
Churches will be allowed to keep these memorials.
The right-wing Popular Party continued to raise objections to the bill.
Its congressional spokesman, Eduardo Zaplana, said the measure was unnecessary and risked destroying national unity fostered by Spain's transition to democracy.
But many Spaniards who suffered under Franco, or lost Republican kin in the civil war, have long demanded recognition.
"For decades, there has been a tremendous injustice," said Emilio Silva, a Madrid resident who formed an organization dedicated to unearthing mass graves after his own search for the remains of his grandfather, slain by Franco's forces.
Silva thinks the bill does not go far enough to repair damages of the past but is a good start.
"All work in recovering historical memory," he said, "is important collective therapy."
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