Spain and Turkey are the two countries of Southern Europe in which demands for shedding a new light on the past are increasingly voiced. Long after transitions to democracy, both countries have been displaying elements of post-transitional justice. With a particular attention to the developments in the quest for truth and justice, the paper intends to analyze the agenda-setting potential of civil society actors. Factors such as the breadth of partisan divide, the impact of political cycles, the extent of privatization as well as localization of efforts, the level of synergy between state institutions and civil society actors and the influence of differing cohort experiences surface in accounting for the variation in the agenda-setting potential of these actors between the two countries.
