The Prosecutor’s Office has addressed the Constitutional Court to ask it to reconsider its recurring refusal to allow the crimes of Franco’s regime to be effectively investigated by judges. The Public Ministry has appealed to the court of guarantees against the filing of the complaint by two brothers who claim to have been tortured by the Political-Social Brigade in Barcelona in 1971. The petition comes after the Constitutional Court has shelved several similar cases of police abuses, both during the Franco regime and during the Transition, explaining that the reported crimes have expired and that, in addition, the effects of the 1977 amnesty also complicate their investigation.
The case that now reaches the hands of the guarantee court is that of the brothers José Pablo and María Isabel Ferrándiz. Opponents of the regime in the Front Obrer and the Young Red Guard of the International Communist Party, they were arrested in April 1971 at their home and placed at the disposal of the Political-Social Brigade at the police headquarters on Vía Laietana, in Barcelona, current headquarters of the Police Headquarters of Catalonia.
There, according to what they say, they were subjected to physical and psychological torture in addition to poor hygiene and food conditions between interrogations that had one objective: “To obtain information about the political militancy of other people from the PCE-I and its organization.” The two were imprisoned, he in La Modelo and she in La Trinitat Vella, where episodes of violence continued until they left prison in 1972 and were pardoned in 1975.
In their complaint, the Ferrándiz brothers identified the police officers they accused of participating in the arrest and investigation against them. A case that came to the hands of a Barcelona court at the end of 2023, once the Democratic Memory Law was in force, which opted for inadmissibility in March 2024 alleging an argument that cuts across all these processes: the crime attributed to the police was not implemented until 2004, long after the events, the prescription of the events that occurred half a century ago and finally the application of the Amnesty Law of 1977. The Barcelona Court rejected the appeals and confirmed the file of the case.
The Public Ministry before the Constitutional Court, in coordination with the Prosecutor’s Office specialized in Democratic Memory, has decided to take the case before the Constitutional Court. The law, he explains in his appeal, recognizes the right of victims of Franco’s regime to obtain from the courts “an effective investigation that leads to the declaration of facts about a reality that occurred in the past, referring to the repression carried out by the State.” The court, when filing this case, made no mention of the Democratic Memory Law. “What is required is the opening of the investigation and, once the facts have been defined, agreeing on what is appropriate.”
Cases rejected by the Constitutional Court
The request from the Prosecutor’s Office in the case of the Ferrándiz twins comes after the Constitutional Court, in several orders and rulings, has closed the door to this type of requests: for courts and tribunals to investigate crimes committed by the Franco regime. Due to the statute of limitations of the crimes, the non-existence of some criminal types at the time the events occurred and, finally, due to the insurmountable wall of the Amnesty Law of 1977.
In recent months, the Constitutional Court has rejected, with internal division, the appeals of two reprisals. One of them is that of Francisco Ventura, an anti-Franco militant arrested and imprisoned in Valencia at the end of the 1960s. In the other case, revealed by elDiario.es, the magistrates have rejected the request of the family of young Ángel Almazán that his death at the hands of the Police in a demonstration in Madrid be effectively investigated during the Transition.
The decisions of the Constitutional Court have not been unanimous and have had the individual vote against progressive magistrates such as Ramón Sáez or María Luisa Balaguer, who for years have supported the need for, at least, these appeals to be admitted for processing and a ruling on the merits of the matter settles the debate on whether courts and tribunals should, at least, investigate the crimes of the dictatorship effectively.
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