In a decision bringing both validation and frustration, the Barcelona Prosecutor’s Office has recognised activist Blanca Serra’s torture at the city’s notorious Via Laietana police headquarters in 1977 as a crime against humanity. However, the office also requested the case’s provisional archiving, citing its inability to identify the individual perpetrators.
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This investigation, the first of its kind initiated by the prosecutor under Spain’s 2022 Democratic Memory Law, marks a significant step towards acknowledging state-sponsored violence during the country’s democratic transition. Yet, its conclusion underscores the immense legal hurdles remaining in bringing historical abusers to justice.
A Landmark Case Under a New Law
Ms. Serra, supported by human rights organisation Irídia and pro-Catalan cultural group Òmnium Cultural, initiated the case. They used the new Democratic Memory Law, which mandates an “effective investigation that satisfies the right of victims to truth, justice, reparation, and guarantees of non-repetition.”
Prosecutors found that agents of the dictatorship’s secret police, the Political-Social Brigade, detained Blanca Serra and her sister, Eva, solely for their political opposition to the Franco regime. Over three days in February 1977, Blanca endured severe physical and psychological violence, intended to extract information and a confession.
Her complaint detailed methods including truncheon beatings on her feet, which broke two toes, and repeated suffocation attempts with a plastic bag. She also suffered humiliation specifically for being a woman and for being Catalan. The prosecutor’s office acknowledged these acts caused lasting traumatic sequelae.
A Pyrrhic Victory for Historical Memory
In its official decree, the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office concluded these events constituted a crime of torture committed as part of crimes against humanity. It described the Francoist regime as one of “systematic and widespread institutionalised oppression.”
Consequently, the state officially granted Blanca Serra the status of a “victim of Francoism.” While this offers moral and historical reparation, the legal outcome is a dead end. The prosecutor requested the case be shelved due to a “lack of a known author,” as the investigation could not definitively identify the responsible officers after nearly five decades.
Irídia and Òmnium Cultural, who plan to issue a full response, initially expressed disappointment that the prosecutor’s office did not transfer the investigation to a criminal court to continue searching for the perpetrators.
An Infamous Address and a Pattern of Impunity
The Jefatura Superior de Policía de Cataluña at Via Laietana 43 remains a potent symbol of state repression for many in Barcelona. Despite its central location witnessing numerous other developments, from historic banks transforming into hotels to architectural restorations, it still houses the Spanish National Police. This fact has drawn sustained protests from victims’ groups demanding its closure or conversion into a memorial site.
Ms. Serra’s case marks Irídia and Òmnium’s third major attempt to prosecute torture at the facility. Previous complaints, concerning the abuse of trade unionist Carles Vallejo in 1970 and siblings Pepus and Maribel Ferrándiz in 1971, also faced archiving. Activists had greater hope for the Serra case because the torture occurred in 1977, after dictator Francisco Franco’s death. They argued this placed it outside the scope of Spain’s controversial 1977 Amnesty Law, but the inability to identify suspects ultimately led to the same result.
This decision leaves Ms. Serra and other victims with their truth officially validated by the state, yet without the justice of seeing their abusers face a court. It underscores the profound challenge the Democratic Memory Law faces in unearthing accountability from a period many institutions would prefer to leave buried.
