MALLORCA TODAY - Garzón acquitted on Franco investigation charge

The Spanish Supreme Court has, by a majority of six to one, absolved Judge Baltasar Garzón of being guilty of an abuse of position in seeking to open investigations of war crimes committed during the Franco era. The case had been driven by the far-right union Manos Limpias. The decision does not mean Garzón can return to office as he was found guilty of exceeding his powers in respect of the wire-tapping of suspects and lawyers to do with the corruption case, "caso Gürtel".

Here Come Da Judge: The Garzón affair

In a café - Spanish - the other afternoon, the television was on. Nothing unusual in this. What was, was what was on. There was a platform of serious-looking speakers. Sounds dull? A party conference maybe? No. It transfixed me. This was an event in support of a judge. It is difficult to imagine a conference either taking place, let alone being televised, in support of "m'lud" in England. But this is Spain.

The event was organised by two of the main unions. Those from the world of the arts and culture were on hand as well to show support for Baltasar Garzón, the most celebrated of Spain's investigating judges.

Back in October 2008, Garzón announced that he was ordering an investigation into crimes committed by the Franco regime. As part of this investigation, graves were due to be dug up. The Spanish attorney-general opposed the investigation, and ultimately Garzón was ordered to call it off. But it didn't stop there. He is now being investigated by the Tribunal Supremo de Justicia (supreme court) in Madrid, accused of "prevaricación" (that word again), manipulating the course of justice and even of some financial wrongdoing. Under the terms of the amnesty of 1977, it is argued (with justification), that Garzón had no right to go around digging up the past.

That he may have exceeded his powers, for which a formal slap on the wrist might have been thought sufficient, has not stopped a process of bringing him to book, one inspired mainly by the far-right in Spain, including the Falange. Didn't know that the Falange still existed? Well they do. The leader of the centre-right Partido Popular, Mariano Rajoy, called the conference in support of Garzón "anti-democratic". The actions of the supreme court have been described, by the left, as "fascist". Forces across the political spectrum are adopting their positions in respect of a judge who, in theory at any rate, acts independently of politics.

For some, Garzón is getting his rightful comeuppance. Others will be revelling in the schadenfreude of a judge with such international celebrity being investigated. Yet more will see the case as an attack on judges' independence. Garzón has not exactly been reticent in courting his celebrity, which, in itself, may be a problem with the system of investigating judges. His attempt to extradite Pinochet was, and remains, his best-known moment in the international spotlight, and international is apt as he seems wedded to the notion of international jurisdiction, something that the Spanish Government has acted to limit.

There is a line of argument that Garzón, in seeking to investigate Franco's crimes, was acting in accordance with law on human rights. The amnesty of 1977 not only heralded a period of collective national amnesia it also undermined any attempt at indicting those who had committed atrocities. This may have suited the immediate post-Franco Spain, but it can also be argued that it left a festering sore, one that has been opened - politically - by the current administration's law on historic memory. An amnesty, so one view has it, cannot rule out a requirement to investigate when the issue of human rights is at stake.

But more than anything, and notwithstanding the accusations against Garzón that he exceeds his powers and is over-zealous, the current case against him highlights the hold that the Franco period still has over Spain. Additionally, one can set the Garzón affair within the context of the spate of corruption allegations. Despite claims that these have been politically motivated, independent investigators are crucial to the exercise of Spanish democracy. If politicians, by their indiscretions, cannot adequately support that democracy, then the judges have to do it for them. A curb on their powers, and this is how one can assess the Garzón affair, might be welcomed in certain quarters, but those powers have never been more important than at present in rooting out the malaise that weakens democratic institutions.

Garzón did go too far. That is the problem. Perhaps he felt emboldened by a political atmosphere, one created by the law on historic memory and not averse to rummaging through the Francoist past. This would have been his first mistake, as it would have politicised, albeit indirectly, his investigation. It may sound unpalatable to those who seek to right the wrongs of the Franco period, but his second mistake was in choosing the wrong investigation and in lining himself up against some still powerful, one might even say dark, forces. And for this, he may end up stripped of his powers. A question will be, will others?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

My Ever Changing Moods

Serenity. October can have this feeling, if, that is, the weather is as benign as it is at present. Sitting on the terrace a couple of afternoons ago, there was a certain stillness; that of the season closing, but closing gracefully with a warm but hazy sun. Even the radiator effect in October by which the heat stokes up the heavy dews and causes a kind of dopiness like a wasp drunk on fermenting apples felt softer than usual. And there was an order. After the blistering sun, and the bustle and franticness of summer, there has been time for growth and a regularisation. The grass has grown and recaptured its greenness but has been cut to shape for the first time in weeks. Autumn is the mellow season, but here this chill-out is observed not so much through the colours of leaves and the disappearing sun but by the onset of a tranquility, the gradual acceptance by the sun that it should slowly retreat and the shifting colour tones of sky and sea. Driving back along the coast road from Puerto Pollensa to Alcúdia yesterday morning, the seascape was calmness, the haze creating a mercury pool of barely rippling water, the hills of Manresa and the sky above them a kaleidoscope of grey and silver tones. Rather than the russets and golds of an English October, you see a Mallorcan autumn as a pastel black and white image, a refraction in negative of the now-being-forgotten vibrancy of blues and yellows of summer. But no less uplifting.


And then the serenity is shattered. You never know quite what to expect. This is the time of year for the payments of some taxes, car tax for example. I collect the mail, and there is one more advice from the town hall than there should be. It is for a car I have no knowledge of, yet there it all is: name, address, personal identity number, all correct. I call the town hall and they say they will pass the information to Trafico. Seems ok, then I think, well no it's not ok, and how long might it take them to inform Trafico. What if this vehicle, to which my name is attached, has an accident, and, moreover, how the hell has my name become attached to it.? So I go to the branch municipal office in Playa de Muro. The ever super-helpful Cati rings the same office as I did, adding some pressure, then I go and see the just as super-helpful Guardia Civil. The lady there gets Trafico central to run a check. Turns out it is ok. The vehicle doesn't seem to exist. No need to worry. Seems it's a town hall cock-up.

Coming back, I think this is a pretty decent system; not the cock-up with this payment advice, but the centralisation of services into one building. At the Playa de Muro office, there is the town hall, tourist office, local police and Guardia. All there under one roof. Life is made pretty easy in what can otherwise be a bureaucratic labyrinth of pass the parcel that generally exists in local public administration. Talk to town hall, town hall talks to Guardia, Guardia talks to Trafico - panic over, and only took a few minutes. I commend the arrangement.

And maybe serenity returns, but then I wait at the red light of one of those entrances from the side road onto the Playa de Muro carretera. The lights flash orange. I start to go. I know to look left. Not everyone would. Two ladies on bicycles riding past me, blissfully unaware of the red light it seems. I gesture with open hands at one of them, and she smiles, not a sarcastic smile but one that suggests she has seen someone who has been kind enough to let her pass and that also suggests that isn't this a lovely day for a bike ride. Exasperation. From serenity to exasperation. It only takes a moment. And that, in an autumn nutshell, a conker of conflicting moods, just about says all you need to know about life in Mallorca.


THE JUDGE DIGGING UP THE PAST
Despite the Spanish attorney-general's opposition, Judge Baltasar Garzón has ordered an investigation - in the context of crimes against humanity - into the actions of Franco and others during the Civil War and into the early '50s. The judge, someone with a history of investigating repressive regimes (Pinochet's, for example), has also ordered the digging up of graves, including that of poet Federico Garcia Lorca, one of over 100,000 people believed to have been killed by the Franco regime.

Why is he doing this? It may bring closure for relatives, but otherwise how necessary is it? The investigation is most unlikely to turn up any surviving perpetrators to be brought to book; it will rake over, literally, the ground of the trauma of the war and its aftermath before Spain began to emerge from its self-imposed dark age around 1953. Does anyone doubt that Franco committed crimes against humanity, other perhaps than hardcore supporters?

The Spanish have never been made to really confront the awfulness of, in particular, the early Franco regime. An amnesty was declared in 1977, though there was never anything like a truth and reconciliation process of the sort that worked with reasonable effect in post-apartheid South Africa; instead, everyone just sort of agreed to forget about it all. But now the Spanish are being made to remember, through the law of "historic memory", the removal of Francoist symbols and now the Garzón investigation. Perhaps they should be made to confront the past, but an investigation which can result in only posthumous convictions is largely hollow in merely confirming what anyone, save the more insane elements of the far-right, will understand to have been the situation. It can only bring back the trauma.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Pointer Sisters (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBw1rgHeRkM). Today's title - the cappuccino kid's second band.

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