The Inextricable Path from a Deathbed to the Fight Against Impunity: The Cases of Franco and Pinochet

ABSTRACT Although Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet both died of natural causes (Franco in 1975 and Pinochet in 2006), and neither of them were put on trial for the crimes committed under their regimes, their bodies did not share the same fate. A comparison of these two cases reveals how the treatment of a perpetrator’s corpse can, from the point of view of the international protection of human rights, constitute an obstacle to ending the impunity enjoyed by those responsible for the abuses. Conversely, the fight against that impunity can have a decisive bearing on the treatment applied to the remains of the deceased perpetrator. A close link may in fact be discerned between the fate of the corpses of mass criminals and the fight against impunity, along with the policy of commemoration, which is pursued – or not – by the state.


Introduction
The year 1975 saw Augusto Pinochet's sole official visit to Spain. The reason was to attend Francisco Franco's funeral. 1 Pinochet had come to power only two years earlier, when he led the coup d'état that killed Salvador Allende and imposed a dictatorship that would not end until 1990. However, Pinochet remained a strong presence on the Chilean public scene until he died of a heart attack in 2006. Pinochet travelled to Madrid to pay a posthumous tribute to Franco that he most likely thought was well-deserved for having led his country with an iron fist for almost forty years. It was a bombastic tribute, in line with the one he surely yearned for himself, but which never happened, as major changes came about in Chile before his death.
The "death connection" between Pinochet and Franco illustrates the strong affinity between the two dictators, who had a lot in common. For example, both died of natural causes without a criminal conviction for the serious human rights violations committed during their regimes. However, one of the most notable differences between them may be observed precisely in the way their dead bodies were dealt with. In fact, the treatment they were given reflects, and is the culmination of, their divergent stories in at least two aspects. One is the period of time they were in power (almost four decades in the case of Franco, who died in power, versus less than two decades in the case of Pinochet, who was forced from power sixteen years before his death). The other aspect is the opening of criminal investigations into human right violations, which was unthinkable and impossible in Franco's Spain, but was viable in post-Pinochet Chile, more exposed to international human rights law, which had witnessed significant advances since the death of the Spanish dictator. 2 On this basis, this article will focus on analysing, from a human rights perspective, how the treatment of the corpse of an executioner who died of natural causes can interact with the fight against impunity. More specifically, it will deal with two of the central principles in this discussion: the obligation of the state to preserve memory and the victims' right to justice. 3 In this particular case, we will compare how the treatment that Franco's body received has influenced the fight against impunity in Spainin terms of the duty to rememberand how the fight against impunity in Chilein terms of the right to justicehas influenced the treatment given to Pinochet's body.
To elaborate on these issues, we first will analyse the treatment given to Franco's body and its effects, which continue to this day, on the duty of the Spanish state to preserve memory. Next, we will look at how the attempts to take Pinochet to court in his final years of life might have conditioned the treatment his body received. To conclude, we will present a series of final remarks regarding interactions between natural death and the fight against impunity.
Franco, the Valle de los Caídos and the Historical Memory Law: The (De)Monumentalization of the Dictator's Dead Body Francisco Franco's natural death left his regime without its founding figure and opened the way to a period of political change, potentially capable of putting an end to the model imposed by the dictator, the repression and the serious violations of human rights. However, the treatment his dead body received largely reflects the efforts made to perpetuate Francoism, whose effects still can be seen today, even though the Spanish transition tends to be presented as a completed and successful project to consolidate peace and democracy. However, the transition is far from being a model process when the benchmark is human rights and the fight against impunity. Throughout the twenty-first century, the demands of the victims and their descendants finally have moved beyond the private sphere into the public scene, which shows that the pact to move forward and forgetthe cornerstone of the Spanish transitionhas not satisfied those who suffered the atrocities and excesses of the dictatorship. In this context, the way to deal with the symbolism around the figure of the dictator is still a matter of debate that affects the construction of collective memory and perpetuates a sensation of impunity in Spanish society. We now will proceed to analyse the treatment given to Franco's dead body. Next, we will deal with the problems arising from the perspective of the protection of human rights in the context of the fight against impunity (particularly in terms of the state's duty to preserve memory), highlighted by the adoption of the 2007 Historical Memory Law (henceforth HML) and the debate it opened in terms of what to do with the dictator's tomb.

The Symbolic Value of Franco's Mortal Remains
General Francisco Franco died at the Hospital de la Paz in Madrid on 20 November 1975, two weeks before turning eighty-three years old. He had held power for almost forty years , 4 first as the leader of the military coup that started the Spanish Civil War (1936)(1937)(1938)(1939), then as a self-proclaimed Caudillo, the strong man of a state under a personalist dictatorial regime. His person was the foundation of Francoism, the ideology and social model forged and consolidated throughout his dictatorship. The dictator's persona became so essential in the state model he created that, even after his death, he continued to a large extent to steer the destiny of Spain in the short-, medium-and long-term. Even when his death was inevitable, his doctors did everything they could to keep him artificially alive, 5 an effort that allegedly had political motivations. 6 Franco's body thus became a metaphor for the need to keep a dying regime alive at all costs. Furthermore, once he passed away, his date of death was charged with symbolism as it was scheduled to coincide with that of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, 7 founder of the Spanish Falange. Renamed Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (Falange Española de las JONS), and led by Franco, it was to become the sole political party permitted by the dictatorship. 8 Further to that, in his capacity as head of state until the day of his death, he had long before dying decided both Spain's destiny and his own. Thus, he secured institutional continuity (starting with his successor as head of state 9 ) legally constructed during his rule, one which was later used to transform his authoritarian system into a democratic regime. 10 He had also decided where his remains would be interred. The chosen place was the Valle de los Caídos [Valley of the Fallen], a massive architectural ensemble 11 that included a monastery, a basilica and a monumental cross in the province of Madrid. 12 Its construction was ordered in 1940 to perpetuate the memory of the fallen in the "Glorious Crusade," 13 that is, the soldiers commanded by Francothe Nationalist factionwho died in the Spanish Civil War. 14 There was an attempt to tone down the exclusionary nature of this monument, which ostracized the fallen Republican soldiers, through the decree-law issued in 1957 that created the Fundación de la Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos [Saint Cross of the Valley of the Fallen Foundation], whose preamble stated: … the long years of peace that have followed the Victory have seen the development of a policy guided by the highest sense of unity and brotherhood among the people of Spain. This has to be, therefore, the Monument to all the dead, over whose sacrifice the pacific arms of the Cross will rise triumphant. 15 However, the way this alleged attempt at reconciliation was carried out was hardly respectful of the dead soldiers of the republic: their bodies were exhumed, without informing their families or asking their authorization, and were moved from all over Spain to the Valle de los Caídos. 16 Approximately twenty thousand bodies remain unidentified to this day. 17 If we add to that the number of political prisoners who participated in the construction of the complex in exchange for sentence reductions, 18 the monument becomes a symbol of the humiliation of the losing side, rather than the hymn to unity it proclaimed itself to be. 19 The Valle de los Caídos was inaugurated in 1959, and to this day it remains officially recognized as part of Spain's national heritage.
The decision to place Franco's remains in the basilica of the Valle de los Caídos seems to have been made before its inauguration. Those in charge of designing it planned a pit at 10  the estate located at the slopes of the Sierra del Guadarrama (El Escorial), known as Cuelgamuros, "to preserve the memory of the fallen in our Glorious Crusade," published in Boletín Oficial del Estado, no. 93, 2 April 1949, 2240. 14 According to the preamble of the Decree of 1 April 1940, it was intended to be "the glorious temple dedicated to our dead and where those who fall in the service of God and the Fatherland will be prayed for. It will be a perpetual place of pilgrimage, the magnificent natural setting of which will provide a dignified setting for the resting place of those who gave their lives in the Crusade." 15  the rear of the crypt 20 and Franco confirmed his desire to be buried there on the day of its inauguration. 21 However, this decision was not known until the moment of his death and was a complete surprise to many who thought Franco would be buried at the Palace of El Pardo, his official residence. 22 Testimonies of the period note that when Franco was close to dying his family apparently sought to refuse to allow him to be buried there. 23 Some authors believe that if, as seems to be the case, it was always intended that the Valle de los Caídos was to become the dictator's mausoleum, dedicating it to the fallen soldiers of the Civil War would have been a means to disguise the huge cost of constructing it. 24 The Treatment Given to the Valle de los Caídos in the HML: A Lost Opportunity With Franco dead, the Valle de los Caídos became a public monument managed by the Consejo de Administración del Patrimonio Nacional [Board of Directors of National Heritage].
It also became the place where those nostalgic for Francoism and supporters of the Falange went every November 20 ("20N") to pay tribute to the dictator and José Antonio Primo de Rivera (also buried there) on the anniversary of their deaths, something they continue to do, even after the commemoration lost its official nature. In the 1980s, groups opposing Francoism started organizing counter-demonstrations on "20N," some of them at the Valle de los Caídos, which ended in tense stand-offs. The HML was passed in this context in 2007, 25 with the object of recognizing and extending rights to those persecuted during the Civil War and the dictatorship, promoting moral reparation and recovering their personal and family memories. It also aimed at adopting complementary measures to eliminate divisive elements and unite Spanish society "en torno a los principios, valores y libertades constitucionales" (article 1.1) [around constitutional principles, values and liberties]. One of the aspects it sought to address was precisely the treatment that the symbols and monuments dedicated to the military uprising, the Civil War and the repression of the dictatorship should be given. The HML did this by ordering their removal, except in the case of those of a strictly private nature or artistic, architectural or artistic-religious examples protected by law (article 15). The case of the Valle de los Caídos is specifically worth mentioning. Article 16 of the HML intended to eliminate the political connotations of this place by stating that it be regulated by the rules applying to places of worship and public cemeteries and expressly forbidding political events or acts related to the exaltation of the Civil War, of the actors involved or of Francoism. By focusing on avoiding disputes, the HML ended up giving an unsatisfactory, insufficient answer to the problem. By limiting itself to underscoring the religious nature of the Valle de los Caídos, the HML lost an opportunity to transform it into a centre for historical interpretation to remember the past in an objective and inclusive way, a demand made by different political groups in their alternative texts to the HML. 26 Transforming the Valle de los Caídos into a place of remembrance was also in line with the suggestions made by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Recommendation 1736 (2006), on the need for international condemnation of the Franco regime. It urged the Spanish government toamong other things -"set up a permanent exhibition in the underground basilica at the Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen) outside Madridwhere Franco is buriedexplaining how it was built by the republican prisoners." 27 However, the HML did not take into account domestic demands nor the international recommendations when it came to deciding the monument's destiny. When the law was discussed in Congress, the socialist government defended it by stating that the Valle de los Caídos never again would be a "place for the exaltation of Francoism nor of any crusade." It added that the law established that the management foundation had, among other objectives, "to honour the memory of all those who died in the Civil War and to further knowledge of that period in history," 28 so only peace and democratic values would be exalted there. 29 The latter statement seems rather illusory in practice given that the HML's solution to the issue of Franco's grave has not cancelled out its symbolic value from the point of view of ending impunity and of the reparation of the victims of Francoism. The dictator's corpse still can be honoured in a public place where, following Calleja, "democracy has not arrived." 30 Furthermore, the foundation that manages the sitecreated in 1957, in Franco's time 31hardly could achieve this objective since it is currently in a legal limbo, its functions and representation having been assigned to the Consejo de Administración del Patrimonio Nacional. It would have been more in keeping with the reparative objective of the law to adopt one of the proposals in some of the alternative bills that suggested the state reach an agreement with Franco's family to move his remains to a pantheon of their choice, the expenses to be covered by the state. 33 The need to desacralize the Valle de los Caídos and remove Franco's grave so his family could honour his remains in a private location was also defended during the discussion of the HML. 34 This view was also shared by the Comisión de Expertos para el Futuro del Valle de los Caídos [Commission of Experts on the Future of the Valle de los Caídos] (CEFVC), created by the government in 2011 to assess potential work that ought to be carried out on this monument, given it had been damaged by the passage of time. 35 In its report, the Commission even suggested not intervening and leaving it to time to turn the complex into rubble, but then discarded that possibility out of respect for the memory of the victims. 36 Instead, it proposed a total re-signification of the monument by turning it into a war victim memorial, which implied moving Franco's corpse to a place designated by his family or to a dignified and more suitable place, given that he had not died in the war. 37 The discussion was reopened by the end of 2013 when the socialist parliamentary group presented a proposition to reconvert the Valle de los Caídos into a "space for the culture of reconciliation, collective democratic memory, dignifying and recognition of all the victims of the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorship." This included the exhumation of Franco's body and its transfer to another place. 38 In 2015, Judge Baltasar Garzón and lawyers Manuel Ollé and Eduardo Ranz, in exercise of the right of petition, asked the government to remove Franco's remains from the Valle de los Caídos and to create a space of memory in that place. The cabinet rejected the petition in September 2016 and its decision was appealed to the Supreme Court, which in March 2017 dismissed the appeal on technical grounds. 39 In November 2016, a non-binding motion brought before the national parliament by Esquerra Republicana insisted on the need to follow the recommendations of the CEFVC, again without success. 40 Surprisingly, the situation changed in May 2017, when yet another non-binding motion brought forward by the socialist group, on the effective application and development of the HML and calling for the removal of Franco's remains from the Valle de los Caídos, 41 was approved by the Congress of Deputies with only one vote against (from a deputy from the right-wing Popular Party). The rest of the Popular Party parliamentary group, which initially opposed the motion, finally opted to abstain. Nevertheless, its spokesperson in the debate 33 Izquierda Verde-Izquierda Unida-Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds, "Proyecto de ley," article 16.c. 34  made it clear they considered that a "party political use" of the history of Spain was being made. In any case, despite the result of the vote, it is unlikely that Franco will leave the Valle de los Caídos. The motion approved is not binding on the government, which predictably will take no action in this regard given its extreme reluctance to develop a policy against impunity and in favour of preserving the memory of the crimes of Francoism. Almost forty years after his death, the dictator still creates controversy 42 and challenges the construction of a collective memory that restores victims' dignity, which in turn reveals the negative impact that the treatment given to his body has had on the fight against impunity in Spain. Indeed, his gravesite is a symbol of the continued existence of Francoism in Spanish public life and is closely connected to the unpunished atrocities committed during Franco's regime, including impunity guaranteed by the 1977 Amnesty Law. Had the dictator's memory been given a private status undoubtedly would have made it easier to end his legacy during the transition, and his human rights violations most likely would have been punished. In fact, it is no surprise that this demand started to gain momentum in an attempt to symbolically end impunity after the efforts to get the crimes committed during Francoism punished proved unsuccessful.

Pinochet's Ashes: The Result of the Struggle Against Impunity
Augusto Pinochet died at the Military Hospital in Santiago de Chile on 10 December 2006 at the age of ninety-one, only a year before the approval of the HML in Spain. He was interred in a chapel located on the family property of Los Boldos, a significant change in the initial plans of the dictator, who would have preferred to be buried in a monumental mausoleum. This decision seems to have been influenced to a large degree by Chilean society's new perspective as a result of criminal investigations beginning in the 1990s regarding crimes committed during the dictatorship, which rendered vulnerable a great symbolic public figure, as Wilde points out. 43 Therefore, it can be stated that the treatment of Pinochet's corpse, compared with that of Franco's, was decisively conditioned by the firm initiatives launched outside and inside the country to fight against impunity for the serious human rights violations committed in Chile during his rule, initiatives that already had encouraged activities aimed at preserving the memory of those violations. 42 Apart from the discussions on impunity and reparations to victims, a series of events in the last years illustrate the controversial continuing influence of Franco in Spanish society. An example of this is the removal from the ARCOMadrid 2012 modern art fair of Always Franco (a sculpture of Franco in dress uniform placed inside a Coca-Cola vending machine), with which the artist, Eugenio Merino, intended to reflect upon the way Spanish society has frozen the image of the dictator. "Eugenio Merino, creator of 'Always Franco': 'My idea was to show that Franco is frozen,'" Cadena SER, 14 February 2012, http://www.cadenaser.com/cultura/articulo/eugenio-merino-autor-always-franco-ideaera-mostrar-franco-refrigerado/csrcsrpor/20120214csrcsrcul_11/Tes (accessed 15 September 2017). The FNFF (one of whose objectives is carrying out "a full range of activities aiming towards the glorification of Franco and the preservation of his legacy, including any that might contribute to the achieving of these ends") had filed a complaint against Merino stating his work was an offensive caricature of Franco (FNFF, complaint of 29 March 2012, factual basis 1) that damaged his honour (ibid., factual basis 3). The complaint eventually was dismissed as the work was deemed an exercise of creative freedom that did not constitute an offence against honour (Tribunal de Primera Instancia no. Here, the old dictator's legal position at the time of his death will be examined, then we will evaluate the impact this might have had on the treatment of Pinochet's corpse, as well as on the memory of the human rights violations committed during his dictatorship.

From a Dictator's Aspirations of Monumental Eternity to the Criminal Investigation of a Suspect
Fernando Olmedo recounts that during a stopover on Gran Canaria island on the return flight after attending Franco's funeral, Pinochet commented to the then-acting civil governor of the island how impressed he had been by the Valle de los Caídos and how much he would like to build a similar monument to house his own remains when his time came. 44 He also was attracted by the idea of building a tomb imitating Napoleon's crypt. 45 His delirium of monumental grandeur for all eternity was thwarted by events between the end of his rule (the 1988 plebiscite and the coming to power of Patricio Aylwin in 1990, democratically elected in 1989) and his death.
After leaving the presidency, Pinochet remained as commander-in-chief of the army, a position he left in March of 1998 to immediately assume the position of senator-for-life on the basis of the 1980 Constitution drawn up during his rule and approved in a referendum, which was heavily criticized for irregularities associated with it. 46 Pinochet continued on the public stage under the protection of the Amnesty Decree Law passed in 1978, 47 but many victims wanted to end his impunity. Given the existence of the amnesty law, alternatives were sought to obtain justice outside Chile. Thus, cases were filed in Italy, Argentina, Spain, France and Belgium. In January 1998, criminal complaints against Pinochet for the atrocities perpetrated during the dictatorship began to reach the Chilean courts. The first one was filed by Gladys Marín Millie, General Secretary of the Communist Party, for the kidnapping and murder in 1976 of members of the party's clandestine leadership, including her husband, Jorge Muñoz. Judge Juan Guzmán Tapia ruled that forced disappearance was an on-going kidnapping, to which the amnesty law was not applicable, 48 marking a turning point in the Chilean judiciary's action in the face of human rights violations committed under Pinochet's government. It also opened the doors to more criminal complaints (such as those relating to the 1973 Caravan of Death; Operation Colombo, organized in 1975; and the torture and disappearances committed at Villa Grimaldi, a clandestine DINA [National Intelligence Directorate, Pinochet's secret police] detention centre, among others). 49 Even though he was aware of legal action against him in other countries, Pinochet decided to travel to London for medical treatment in September 1998. His position as senator-for-life guaranteed him immunity in Chilean courts, but not abroad. Taking advantage of these circumstances, in October of that year the Spanish Audiencia Nacional [National High Court] issued an international warrant for his detention and he was arrested on the 16 October in London. Following a series of court decisions, including a granting of extradition, 50 the UK eventually refused Pinochet's extradition in 2000 for "humanitarian reasons" claiming that he was not fit to face trial. 51 He returned to Chile in March 2000, where his immunity was lifted in August in relation for the Caravan of Death case. Judge Guzmán prosecuted Pinochet in December 2000 and issued an arrest warrant in 2001. However, some months later, the Appeals Court temporarily set aside the case due to Pinochet's health. The case finally was dropped in July 2002 on the grounds of his suffering from moderate dementia.
In the following months and years, the former dictator was successively stripped of his immunity, prosecuted and placed under house arrest for different cases related to crimes committed during his dictatorship, cases that continued to be filed until November 2005, when he was found mentally fit to be tried in the Operation Colombo case. Further to that, the discovery of secret accounts at the Riggs Bank in the USwhich would have enabled him to amass a vast fortune without legal justificationalso caused his prosecution and arrest that same month, this time for tax evasion and forgery. When he died, he was under house arrest in connection with the Caravan of Death case. A few weeks before that, on 25 November, his birthday, he had assumed "political responsibility for all he had done" in a written statement read by his wife. 52 His death prevented him from being held accountable in court, but justice pursued him right until his very end.

Private Remembrance of Pinochet Versus the Collective Memory of the Dictatorship
Pinochet had dreamed of his own Valle de los Caídos or a tomb like Napoleon's. However, he settled for commissioning his cousinduring his first years in powerwith the construction of a family mausoleum at the General Cemetery of Santiago, 53 where the democratically elected presidents are buried, 54 including Salvador Allende. It is also the place holding the Memorial del Detenido Desaparecido y Ejecutado/a Político/a, a memorial to the thousands of Chileans whose remains have not been found or who were murdered for political reasons. The former dictator's parents and parents-in-law were laid to rest in the notably austere 55 Pinochet-Hiriart mausoleum. 56 However, before dying, Pinochet told his family he did not want to be buried, but rather cremated, so as to prevent his grave from being desecrated by his detractors, and he wanted the urn with his ashes to remain with the family. 57 Many in Chile received word of Pinochet's death on 10 December 2006 -Human Rights Daywith great joy, and public demonstrations to express that joy came swiftly. However, it also made the split in Chilean society clear, as other sectors expressed their sorrow for the dictator's death and showed their support. Ultimately, Pinochet's aspirations of eternal political glory did not materialize: the Chilean government announced there would be no official mourning period nor a funeral with state honours; public events related to his memory focused on his army credentials. The government authorized flags to fly at half-mast on army premises and at military units. His body lay in state for a day at the Military School in Santiago, where the army paid tribute to him in his capacity as former commander-in-chief. A large number of his supportersaround sixty thousand peoplefiled past his coffin. 58 The funeral included a mass at the Military School, followed by funeral ceremonies at the Honour Courtyard of this institution. 59 Only the minister of defence attended in representation of the government.
The possibility of his ashes being buried at the General Cemetery of Santiago, or in another public institution such as the Military School, was ruled out. His family decided to take them to Los Boldos, a family-owned estate in the Valparaíso region, approximately 130 km southeast of Santiago where Pinochet had died under house arrest for the Caravan of Death case. His remains were placed in a private chapel that the former dictator had ordered built in 1998 to celebrate his 55 th wedding anniversary and are guarded by soldiers. The only setbacks have been the embargo placed on the land by the courts in 2010 in the context of the Riggs case, and the subsequent discovery of 182 marihuana plants on the property, the latter being semi-abandoned, according to the family and the media. 60 The private nature of Pinochet's grave has not totally solved divisions in Chilean society. On certain dates, such as 11 September, there is still unrest and disturbances, 61 and the former dictator still has supporters. However, he and his legacy are increasingly condemned. 62 Furthermore, there has been no need for the state to decide how to treat the dictator's remains from the memorial point of view. This has allowed it to focus on the public remembrance of the human rights violations committed during the dictatorship, in line with what had happened during the first years of democracy. Such trend later declined, only to be rekindled in 1998 when Pinochet was arrested in London. In fact, some authors see this year as the moment when historical memory erupted in Chile, in Wilde's words. 63 The vitriolic reaction that this caused among Pinochet's supporters contrasts with the half-hearted reactions to his arrest in 2005 for the crimes committed during Operation Condor, following the release of the Valech report a year earlier. 64 As Winn recalls, there were lukewarm words of concern for the former dictator's health from the army and right-wing civilians, and the army even admitted responsibility for the tortures inflicted by its members. 65 This reveals that the narrative portraying Pinochet as Chile's saviour had declined in favour of the recognition of the bloody years the country had gone through during his dictatorship. Yet, on 20 December 2006, a few days after Pinochet's death, a group of congressional representatives presented a draft law setting up monuments to his memory in Santiago, Iquique and Valparaíso. 66 The proposal was not retained. By contrast, other initiatives, such as the one leading to the opening of the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in 2010, have become a reality.

Final Remarks
Franco and Pinochet have much in common, such as having died, unpunished, of natural causes. However, what happened after they died differentiates them, as reflected in the respective treatment their corpses received as a result both of historical circumstances and of the impact of initiatives to end their impunity. These two variables caused a separation in terms of the control these dictators achieved over their desired final resting place, a huge monumental complex in the case of Franco, while Pinochet had to make do with his ashes being placed in a chapel in his family estate.
From a historical point of view, there is no denying that the length of their rule necessarily affected the extension of their power beyond death. Thus, while Franco remained in power right until he died, Pinochet was forced to abandon power after he lost the 1988 national referendum. Furthermore, we cannot ignore either the great advances in the protection of human rights at the international levelincluding the establishment of principles governing the fight against impunity from a human rights perspective within the framework of the UN Commission on Human Rightsbetween the death of Franco in 1975 and that of Pinochet in 2006.
The evolution of international human rights law clearly affected, in different ways, the social perception of each of these dictators inside and outside Spain and Chile, and the victims' demands after each of them diedthey were much firmer in the case of Pinochet compared to that of Franco. When the former died, a number of court cases were underway against him for serious violations of human rights, which led to a perception that the formerly all-powerful dictator was no longer untouchable in Chilean society.
From the point of view of the fight against impunity, an unpunished dictator dying of natural causes takes on a strong symbolic nature for both his supporters and his detractors. It is therefore essential to tone down this symbolism by consigning posthumous memory to the private sphere, so it does not interfere with the democratic momentum in the public sphere. Setting up public memorials to honour a dead dictator reveals a clear lack of consistency: the violation of human rights is in every way a disgraceful practice unworthy of exaltation. In this regard, from the perspective of the protection and promotion of human rights, what happened in Chile with the dead body of Pinochet is much more appropriate than the half-hearted solution provided by the Spanish HML.
The public nature of Franco's gravesiteeven when there has been an intention to depoliticize the placemeans that its future is still linked to the state institutions and implies an acceptance of keeping it in the public sphere as the heritage of every Spaniard, funded by the state. The increasing demands to exhume Franco's body confirm that his corpse remains an obstacle to the full recognition of his victims and the restoration of their dignity. The only way to prevent his body from enjoying impunity forever is to act, so the dictator is no longer part of democratic life.

Notes on contributor
Rosa Ana Alija Fernández, is a Reader at the Department of Criminal Law and Criminal Sciences, and Public International Law and International Relations at the University of Barcelona. Her main teaching and research areas are international law, international human rights law, international criminal law and transitional justice. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Puerto Rico and a visiting researcher at the University of Uppsala, and at the Research Centre in Latin-American Criminal and Procedural Law (Forschungsstelle für lateinamerikanisches Straf-und Strafprozessrecht) at the University of Göttingen. She has collaborated with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in training Rwandan lawyers on universal jurisdiction, and with international research teams and networks in the field of transitional justice. Among her publications are La persecución como crimen contra la humanidad (Barcelona: Universidad de Barcelona, 2011) and, with Jordi Bonet Pérez, Impunidad, derechos humanos y justicia transicional (Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, 2009).