When Spanish Magistrate Baltasar Garzón ten years after having investigated in the Pinochet case on human rights charges in the Southern Cone, started the investigation of the enforced disappearances during the Spanish Civil War, he opened the first criminal investigation into Francoist repression. Based on universal jurisdiction principles and using international human rights laws, it was a – finally failed – attempt to vanquish the Amnesty Law and consequently, impunity in Spain, following the demands of local memory initiatives. The contribution analyses transnational transfer processes of memory practices and how civil society protagonists in the local Spanish memory-movement refer to judicial terms as ‘universal jurisdiction’, ‘impunity’ or ‘desaparecido’ to inscribe the Civil War past and the Franco dictatorship into a transitional justice discourse, oriented on the experiences of coming to terms with the past made by Chilean and Argentinean Human Rights Organizations. The open cases in Argentinean Courts in April 2010 in the name of relatives of victims of the Franco dictatorship to investigate Francoist repression, especially the practice of enforced disappearance as ‘crimes against humanity’, reveal that the direction for applying universal jurisdiction-principles could begin to change. It explores the way in which transitional justice concepts, such as ‘truth’, justice’ and ‘reparation’ have steadily being inscribed into the Spanish case and its process of coming to terms with the past, finally incorporating growing judicial demands on a local level. The restriction of universal jurisdiction mechanisms in Spanish legislation as well as the proceedings against Magistrate Garzón and his suspension from Audiencia Nacional demonstrate the existing obstacles of a confrontation with the Franco dictatorship in Spain.
