New route. After the judges’ refusal to investigate police torture committed during the Franco regime and the Transition despite the new framework implemented by the Democratic Memory Law, the victims have gone to the specialized Prosecutor’s Office.
Coinciding with the 49th anniversary of the death of the dictator Francisco Franco, Irídia and Òmnium Cultural have presented this Wednesday the first complaint to the Prosecutor’s Office for Human Rights and Democratic Memory of Barcelona for the torture against the Serra sisters, historical activists of the Catalan independence left. . The complaint was filed by Blanca Serra, the only one of the sisters who is still alive.
The procedure before the Prosecutor’s Office comes after two previous complaints from Irídidia, Òmnium Cultural and the World Organization Against Torture (OMCT) for the torture suffered by the Ferrándiz brothers and Carles Vallejo during the Franco regime were archived. The victims have appealed for protection to the Constitutional Court when they disagreed with the thesis of the judges, who archived the cases by arguing that despite the framework of the new Memory Law, torture had also expired and remained under the umbrella of the 1977 amnesty.
“This is an act of justice for the victims, a necessary gesture to end impunity,” said Blanca Serra, who highlighted the two elements of the torture she suffered: “One is her Catalan identity and the other is her condition as a woman.” ”Serra stated.
“Power was placed beyond the margins of the law, and the condition of Catalanness and women’s bodies became a perfect target for the demonstration of the force and violence of the State,” he considered.
Serra, who was born in 1943, has assured that after so many years he has managed to work through the trauma and be able to report what he suffered: “I have thought about it a lot because many years have passed. And I had not talked much about the arrests and torture,” he explained. The main reasons that have pushed her to make the decision have been “for youth to be up to date with what is happening, has happened and will happen” and “to demand Justice.”
She has recounted some of the torture she suffered, such as when they put a plastic bag over her head that prevented her from breathing: “You come to think that it is possible to die, and also alone, because they insisted a lot on the idea that you would die alone because no one He would remember you.” She has also referred to other violence she experienced, such as when she was hit on the sole of her foot with a baton.
Sònia Olivella, criminal lawyer and strategic litigation coordinator at Irídia, has regretted the “impunity” imposed by the courts’ refusal to apply the existing legal framework and has explained that with Blanca Serra’s complaint a very important step is taken in the fight “against the impunity of Francoism and the Transition.”
The complaint has been filed with the specialized prosecutor for Human Rights and Democratic Memory of the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of Barcelona, Sara Gómez Expósito, who was appointed last July.
Serra asks the prosecutor for pre-procedural procedures that the judges have not agreed upon when initially filing the investigations, such as gathering witnesses, taking statements, advising the agencies to provide all the files and also asking the management of the National Police to facilitate all the information to identify the agents who participated in the torture.
The complaint concerns four arrests suffered by the victim and her sister between 1977 and 1982 (the last three under the current Constitution). “These arrests always took place at their home, which means that they were under surveillance, and they were always taken first to the headquarters at Via Laietana 43,” indicated the lawyer.
In three of these arrests, the National Police transferred Blanca Serra to the Madrid Police General Directorate building, which, from their point of view, shows that this repression was “fully coordinated.”
Olivella has highlighted that his case is after Franco’s death and that it is part of the application of the anti-terrorist law, which protected long and incommunicado detentions without legal guarantees. In the last arrest, which was for “outraging the unity of the Spanish nation by displaying an independence banner,” she had to spend a month in the Trinidad prison, where she was kept incommunicado “so that she would not infect the rest of the inmates.” .
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