Spain Offers Justice at Last to Victims of Franco's Tribunals

Sixty-five years after the civil war ended, and almost 30 years after the death of General Francisco Franco, Spain yesterday set about restoring the honour of tens of thousands who gave their lives for the losing side.

The Socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero agreed to review the case of Lluís Companys, the president of Catalonia executed in Barcelona by one of Franco's firing squads. Many Catalans see Companys as a martyr for their nation.

On the 64th anniversary of his death, deputy prime minister María Teresa Fernández de la Vega said a committee of ministers would consider annulling the verdicts against Companys and other victims of Franco's military tribunals. She said a cabinet meeting pledged "full moral satisfaction to those who found themselves submitted to criminal cases that clearly did not meet the minimum rules for a fair trial".

Companys was shot in 1940, following conviction for "military rebellion", after being returned from France by the Gestapo. "For Catalonia!" are said to have been his last words in front of the firing squad.

Mr Zapatero's government was unlikely to bow, however, to demands that it formally apologise for Companys' execution, said Manuela de Madre, a senior Catalan socialist. It was not its place to do so: "A democratic, legitimate government does not have to ask for pardon."

The justice minister, Juan Fernando López Aguilar, had told the cabinet it would be possible to satisfy those wanting to annul the verdicts, according to Ms Fernández de la Vega. She also warned, however, that it was legally complex and could have constitutional repercussions.

The review was not welcomed by everyone. Pío Moa, author of bestselling revisionist civil war histories, said Companys had allied himself with violent anarchists and tried to grab self-rule for Catalonia, twice weakening the same democratic republic that Gen Franco had risen against.

"To say that Companys was one of the main people responsible for the civil war corresponds to exact historical reality," he wrote in the conservative ABC newspaper. "Companys ... oversaw the greatest period of crimes and disorder Catalonia has known."

Mr Zapatero's government is under increasing pressure to provide some sort of closure to all Franco's victims, including those who never even came before the summary tribunals, but were simply shot and buried in mass graves. Relatives have asked the government to exhume them and to get historians to clarify exactly who did what to whom in a bloody war when all sides committed atrocities. Estimates vary, but 350,000 died in battle or in jail, or by bombing and starvation.

The past government of the conservative People's party, led by José María Aznar, refused to bow to demands by all the other parties to do something for Franco's victims. "They say that Spain had a model transition [from fascism] to democracy, but we have left too many things awaiting attention," wrote columnist Josep Pernau in Barcelona's El Periódico.