The Silence of Others (2018) - full transcript

I was six years old
when they came for my mother.

People from the town, Franco supporters.

They found her the next day
by the side of the road.

They couldn't take her to the cemetery.

The townspeople wouldn't let them.

This stays here.

The day after tomorrow,
the flowers will be gone.

Yes.

This is the gravesite.

This is the mass grave.

Look... there.



In those brambles...

They threw the clothes.

And left the women naked.

How unjust life is.

Not life.

We humans... we are unjust.

We call it the Spanish Civil War,
but it began with a military coup.

That's Franco next to Hitler.

Franco was the dictator in Spain
for almost 40 years.

Spaniards...

Franco...

has died.

Finally the murderers start rotting

While our people are growing



And the cry for amnesty grows and grows

Soon we'll be walking along the Gran Vía

Let them come, yes

The left fought for an amnesty
to free political prisoners.

And thought they had won.

But the new law also granted amnesty
for all the crimes of the dictatorship.

This came to be known as
"The Pact of Forgetting."

It's simply a forgetting...

An amnesty for all, by all.

A forgetting for all, by all.

A law can establish a forgetting...

but that forgetting
shall come down to all of society.

We must ensure that
this forgetting becomes widespread

because it is the only way

we can shake each other's hands
without rancor.

Those of us raised after Franco
don't really know what happened.

Schools never taught us about it.

Our parents didn't tell us.

And we can't tell our children
because we ourselves don't know.

Come, I'm going to take you somewhere.

To give you a little surprise.

Okay?

That's the entrance, and that's the house.

Antonio González Pacheco lives here.

Alias "Billy the Kid."

This is the person who
tortured me on three occasions

when I was just over 20.

I have to live just meters away

from the person who tortured me.

That's him.

"Billy the Kid."

I think he enjoyed producing terror.

We have a lot of information about him.

For example, he ran
the 33rd Madrid Marathon...

and the New York one, too.

This character is untouchable.

But I think we've found a way
to bring him to justice.

- Good morning.
- Don't tell me we got here last.

The barbarians from the north.

Hey, how's it going?

What's up?

We have 148 torturers here.

This is the famous one... "Billy the Kid."

We have selected seven
who later held important positions.

The idea of indicting a cabinet member now
is too much, right?

But this is the moment
to go after "Billy the Kid."

That one is indisputable
and no one will come to his defense.

A bit of gentle music, right?

Albinoni, the "Adagio."

When someone is murdered, it's clear.

The courts must prosecute the criminal
and provide reparations to the victim.

Yet when we talk about genocide
or crimes against humanity,

it's not so clear.

Rather, people start
looking for arguments.

"It was a long time ago.

It's better to forget,
we must turn the page," etc.

How can you serve justice
for crimes committed by the state?

By involving the courts of the world.

That's the idea of universal jurisdiction.

Crimes against humanity
can be prosecuted at any time,

by any court anywhere in the world.

The great example
is what happened in Chile, with Pinochet.

The former dictator remains under guard

after an arrest warrant was issued
by a Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzón.

I was a lawyer on that case.

Even we couldn't believe
that Pinochet had been arrested.

Justice! Justice has been served!

It sends the world a clear message.

These criminals cannot go unpunished.

Their crimes have
no statute of limitations.

There are no borders to their prosecution.

The prosecution of Judge Garzón
is used to state

that crimes committed under Franco
cannot be investigated at all.

And so we decided
to file a lawsuit in Argentina.

We have no doubt it will grow.

Since it was announced publicly
four days ago,

we've received numerous calls and emails

from relatives of victims
of the Franco regime.

We will find you wherever you may go!

Are you ready to give your testimony?

Yes...

If you could testify before a judge,
what would you say?

I'm a plaintiff

because I'm reclaiming
my right to justice.

I'm in the lawsuit for my father's death.

My father is buried in Baeza
with everyone executed there,

nine hundred or so.

We're in the lawsuit

for the execution by garotte
of my brother Salvador, who was 25.

My father was one of the slaves
of the Franco regime.

I have relatives who have spent
almost 20 years in prison.

The Fascists took him out
to a road 30 kilometers away

and executed him.

My grandfather...

was beaten to death...

because he wouldn't say
where his sons were.

The thing is,
all this has been covered up until now.

And then,

a path emerges.

A little door.

Hey, we can resort
to universal jurisdiction.

Spain's Amnesty Law has prevented

Spanish judges from investigating.

But crimes against humanity
have no statute of limitations.

No amnesty can cover them up
or prevent their investigation.

You don't understand what it's like
to talk to someone who's 80 and tells you,

"I need to talk to the judge
because I may die."

There are many people asking
to testify by videoconference.

We believe we have satisfied
all procedural requirements

to move forward with these measures.

There's a lot to read.

And what we need are witnesses, right?

We need witnesses.

In this case,
there are several protagonists.

Time is one of them.

LONG LIVE FRANCO

Those who don't want this to go to trial

are relying on time
to take the victims away.

GENERALISSIMO FRANCO SQUARE

- Hello.
- Hello.

How are you?

Hello, honey.

Very good, and you?

Thank you very much.

When they came for my mother,

they put her in the school,
which was the jail for women.

There...

they shaved their heads.

She hadn't done anything.

They were harvesters.
They said she was a "red."

They walked her through the village
with fifes and drums

so everyone would come out to see.

The village kids all followed behind...

but they didn't let me get near her.

That night they killed 27 men
and three women.

Lucía, María, and my mother,
Faustina López González.

My father told me,

"Try to retrieve the remains one day
and bring them to me."

But I've always been alone.

My own children fight among themselves.

Some want to, some don't.

I'm not asking for revenge.

- I ask for the remains...
- The right to bury her.

...her remains.

To bury her with her husband.

Nothing more. That's all I ask for.

We are now presenting our case
in Argentina.

You'll be part of that case.

How am I going to go to Argentina...
in my condition?

No, you don't have to go.

What's important is that they say,

"In Spain, at that time,
there were crimes against humanity."

And when that is said,
the country will have the obligation

to give you the remains.

When I would have died...

Not far from María's

stands one of the few monuments
to Franco's victims.

A few hours after its unveiling,

after decades of democracy,

someone shot the statues.

The sculptor deemed that the bullet holes
had completed his work.

The spirit of harmony,
born in the Spanish transition...

...is not made by stirring up tombs and
bones or butting heads with each other.

It's made by working hard every day
for the future of the country.

Does it make sense that in 2016,

thousands of Spaniards still don't know
where their grandparents are buried?

I'm not sure what you're saying is true,

or that the government
can do anything to fix it.

Well, it is true, Mr. Rajoy.

Sure, of course, many people don't know.

But it makes more sense to avoid
repeating those things in the future

than to mull continually over the past.

Good evening.

These are times to strengthen
a Spain of open arms,

where no one stirs up old grudges
or opens closed wounds.

Do you know what
the Pact of Forgetting is?

No.

Do you know what the Amnesty Law is?

No.

We don't study those things.

The Amnesty Law...

It rings a bell, but...

No.

We must forget the whole past
because it was 40 years ago.

Because some lost relatives in the war
on the Republican side,

and others lost people on Franco's side.

Forget everything and... move on.

We won't get anywhere with that.

This... is the toilet.
It used to be there.

This has to do with my obsession
with putting things in their place.

When I was here, I must have been... 24.

I was charged with illicit association
and illegal propaganda.

The story of my opposition to
the Franco dictatorship begins in 1968...

with the founding
of a democratic student union.

There is no freedom of the press,
no right of assembly.

A member of this union,
Enrique Ruano, is murdered by the police.

They put two bullets in his head

and throw him out of a window,
calling it a suicide.

This makes a deep impression.

That's when I decided I had no choice
but to devote my life

to ending that dictatorship.

For my whole generation,
the dictatorship meant...

depriving us of freedom...

...of rights, of everything.

We thought there was another way to live,

more fulfilling,
where we could be happier.

I was ready to leave
when the police knocked.

"Billy the Kid" stuffed
a cloth in my mouth.

And from then on, the blows...

We arrived at the
General Security Headquarters,

what we called the "DGS."

Nobody knew you were there.

You disappeared.

In that building...

People were tortured!

In that building...

People were assassinated!

Forty days of torture...

Something breaks inside you,
and will never be the same.

Thousands of people
had their entire lives broken.

Who they were, and what they could become.

We have lost everything.

And we will have to fight again
to recover what we lost,

and much more.

And I, even if it's the last thing I do,

I'll be there speaking out against this.

This is a historic moment

because the plaintiffs are going
to testify before the judge

that is, in a court of law,
for the first time.

I don't think we've ever
taken such an important step, ever.

Good luck, honey...

- Ready?
- Yes.

Hold on.

- There's an hour delay.
- Oh, no!

We're so on edge that
every little thing makes us...

Makes us think...

Yes, tell me...

Yes...

Goodbye.

It seems that the ambassador

- called the judge...
- You're kidding.

...saying that
if videoconferences take place,

it would mean breaking
relations with Spain.

So the videoconferences
have been canceled.

What you should write is,

"Videoconferences canceled due
to pressure from the Spanish government."

It's an attempt to paralyze this lawsuit

that the government feels
is growing by the minute

and is becoming more unstoppable...

There are very powerful interests

that want to prevent
all this from being investigated.

Onwards, squadrons, to victory

That a new day dawns in Spain!

Hail Spain!

Hail Spain! Hail Spain!

MAKE SPAIN GREAT AGAIN

In my opinion, the most important thing
to remember about Franco

is that he was never wrong.

Franco saved
Christian Western civilization

from communist tyranny.

The forgetting started
long before the amnesty.

The world chose to forget,

embracing Franco
in its fight against communism.

Regarding the succession
to the Head of State,

it's all taken care of,
with no loose ends...

with the designation of
Prince Juan Carlos of Borbón as my heir.

I receive from His Excellency,
the Head of State Generalissimo Franco

the political legitimacy
that arose on July 18, 1936.

After Franco's death, many of his police,
judges and politicians

simply continued on.

I think the "forgetting"

was internal,
among the politicians themselves.

They didn't want the Spanish people
to know that all these politicians

had previously been defenders
of Franco's regime.

So they were interested in forgetting

because talking about Franco
meant talking about their past.

The results of the vote are as follows,

296 in favor,

two opposed.

Gentlemen, the Amnesty Law is approved.

I wrote to all the bigwigs,
as I call them.

To the King,

his son,

the president,

the mayor here.

"Hello, Honorable Judge
of the Supreme Court in Madrid.

After they killed his wife,

the only answer my father got was,

'You'll take her to the cemetery
when pigs fly.

So don't cause problems,

or we might do to you what we did to her.'

Best regards from this woman

who keeps waiting

for pigs to fly.

María Martín."

I'm lost, is it up here?

Yes, this way.

Okay, much better.

This is the town where
my grandmother's whole story took place.

I'm María Ángeles Martín,

daughter of María Martín,

granddaughter of Faustina López,
my grandmother,

murdered in Pedro Bernardo.

Kids threw stones at us on the street.

Walking down the street,
you'd be looking out for an escape route.

Because when I'd run into someone...

they'd do this with the finger.

"We shouldn't have left
even the offspring."

Whenever she saw
the Civil Guard approaching,

my mother would pee on herself.

For her, it's not like
they had changed with the democracy.

Because it was the same institution,
the same people, the same mayor.

Sometimes I'm not so in favor
of changing street names.

Because it's history,
good or bad, it's history.

Do you find streets in Germany
named after Hitler's guys?

It was a bad thing,
something that shouldn't happen again.

The culture and history of a country
are based on the good and the bad, right?

And we must also remember the bad, right?

- But so it doesn't happen again.
- So it doesn't happen again.

- But not to memorialize it.
- No.

- I can't handle it.
- But why?

I think that
it should have been done ages ago.

I live on General Yagüe Street.

He's one of the generals
who revolted with Franco.

He's known as "The Butcher of Badajoz"

because he took over 4,000 prisoners

and executed them all
in the city's bullfighting ring.

Every day I wake up on a street

dedicated to this war criminal.

THE LEADER SQUARE

FRANCO'S COAT OF ARMS

GENERAL VARELA STREET

GENERAL MOSCARDÓ STREET

CAPTAIN HAYA STREET

HAIL SPAIN SQUARE

FRANCO'S VICTORY ARCH

I have the feeling that we're stuck.

We have to bring the lawsuit
back to life again.

We filed the lawsuit three years ago.

We can't allow this
to stretch out any longer.

What's critical in a lawsuit like this
is the social movement.

So we have to be creative and see how,
by mobilizing people,

we can push things forward.

There's not a town in Spain

without victims
of the Franco regime, right?

This is not about looking at the past.

We're fighting for the future.

We're joining as Lora del Río's
Historic Memory Association.

We're joining this project,

with great enthusiasm.

We want to bring this to little towns.

To gather signatures and also statements
of support from town halls.

One town hall at a time.

If the judge decides to issue

international arrest warrants
for these people,

our possibilities open up completely.

All this is going to snowball.

My name is María Mercedes Bueno.

I was born in La Línea,

a town in the province of Cádiz,
near Gibraltar.

I was 18 and pregnant.

At that time,

to be a single mother
was a terrible stigma.

My gynecologist hospitalized me.

It was December 24, Christmas Eve.

He said, "I'll put you to sleep
so you don't panic."

The next day,

they told me the baby was dead

and that the hospital would
take care of everything.

Twenty-eight years later...
I'm surfing the web,

and I start seeing tons of cases
of stolen babies

at the Municipal Hospital of La Línea,

with that same doctor.

And I realized that thousands of babies
had been stolen all over Spain.

All the cases seem to have
a common denominator.

The children are not buried
in the cemetery...

...of the three coffins, two were empty.

They only had bandages and sawdust.

We'd like to see the supposed records
of my daughter's burial

from December 24th, 1981.

There's nothing here under that name.

- Nothing?
- Nothing.

I discovered that this horror
began in the 1940s under Franco.

There had always been rumors.

This is Dr. Vallejo Nágera.

He studied Nazi Germany's eugenics

and became the head
of military psychiatry under Franco.

EUGENICS OF SPANISHNESS
AND REGENERATION OF THE RACE

He held that leftists
carried a "red gene..."

and proposed to purge that gene

by separating the children
of the vanquished from their parents.

Thousands of children were given
to families loyal to the regime.

DOCTOR VALLEJO-NÁGERA BOULEVARD

With time,
many believe the practice evolved.

But the justification
switched from political to moral.

The new targets were single women

and poor families
with "too many" children.

In Argentina, they estimate 500 children
were taken by the military dictatorship.

In Spain, we count the stolen children
by the tens or hundreds of thousands.

I get that this lawsuit focuses
on crimes committed under Franco,

but we belong there, too.

Because when a system
is in place for 40 years,

the machinery
can't just be stopped in '75.

These practices continued,
they went on and on.

We want our children, alive or dead.

That's all we want.

It's not much. It's so little.

It's a pittance that we're asking for.

There are such terrible people...

Look.

Judge Servini orders the detention
of four torturers.

It's really historic!

An Argentine judge
investigating Franco-era crimes

has ordered Spain and Interpol to detain
four members of the security forces

to interrogate them
about alleged crimes of torture.

Who did they indict?

"Billy"?

Great!

Oh, my God! Yes!

Now is when the fight begins.

We've made a quantum leap, haven't we?

Come on, let's toast!

Where are we?

In The New York Times.

Let me see!

Try to move this way,
so we can see the door better.

My name is Ascensión Mendieta Ibarra,

and I am in the lawsuit
to see if we can get my father out.

I had lost hope.

But I have the dream...

That now I'll be able to see him.

It's a pleasure to have you here with me.

If anyone wants to say something,
I'll listen.

My name is Paqui Maqueda.

I bring you today
the names of 22,000 men and women

still disappeared
in the Andalusian region.

I also bring you our immense gratitude

and our hope.

My father died on November 16th, 1939.

He died and left seven small children.

We want to see if justice could be served

so we can get him out of a mass grave.

You must understand that investigating
crimes in other countries is difficult.

If I don't do more, it's because
we face a number of obstacles.

This is the most important case
in my court.

I'll do what I have to do.

- A rainbow.
- A rainbow.

This journey is full of signs,
I'm convinced.

Look, such a beautiful rainbow...

Starting in the 1980s, as dictatorships
fell across Latin America,

many countries used
Spain's Pact of Forgetting as a model.

But over time,
citizens called for truth and justice,

and one by one, these countries
overturned their amnesty laws.

Former rulers, police and judges
have been put on trial.

Today, all over the world,

truth commissions and special tribunals
work to uncover the past.

Old prisons and death camps
have become museums

where people are urged to remember.

All the decisions
about what happened here,

who to kidnap,

how the operations...

Seeing a school group here
brings tears to our eyes.

When will we see students in the
General Security Headquarters saying,

"Look, Chato was tortured here"?

The extradition process continues

for Antonio González Pacheco,
alias "Billy the Kid"

and former Civil Guard
Jesús Muñecas Aguilar.

Extradite the torturers!

It's the first time
the voice of the victims

will be heard before a court,

and it will be 10,000 km
away from our country.

Come on, go for it!

Ma'am, come in. Have a seat, please.

May I...

...my family was exiled,
like over half a million Spaniards...

...my grandfather was assigned to
Camposancos concentration camp...

...I was in many
of Franco's prisons until 1977...

...my father was disappeared.
They threw him into a well...

...the theft of
my twin brother, Francisco...

...our family house was confiscated...

...we were victims
of the prevention centers...

...the killing of workers in Vitoria...

...the sentences against us
were never annulled.

We're still considered criminals...

...to be able to give my mother
a tiny margin of justice...

...so that it isn't repeated.

What a show!

Murderers!

Have you accepted the extradition?

"I keep your passports,"
said Judge Pablo Ruz,

who ordered them to appear weekly in court

and barred them
from leaving the country...

The next step in this process will be
the extradition hearing itself.

How are you?

Very well...

It's okay...

Today, for the first time in 77 years,

two of Franco's torturers

had to respond to a judge's questions

about the crimes they committed.

It's a first step.

In no time,
we'll see the first criminal in jail.

Don't worry, we'll get those bones.

Do you want a coffee?

Yes.

Poor thing, she always says,

"When they shot him... did he really die?

How did he fall? On his side? Face down?"

I remember well, she spent years and years

yearning for her father, poor woman.

What happened?

I don't know...

Hi, there.

I'm here to give you some news.

How are you?

Judge María Servini has ordered
Spain to exhume your father.

- To get him out?
- Yes.

Dear God, what joy!

Now if I die,
I will take my father's bones with me.

I'm so happy for you...

So they'll get him out?

She's ordered the Spanish judiciary
to do what they have to do.

- Thank you so much, son.
- You're welcome.

So much time...

My sister died wanting to get him out,
but we never could.

Your trip really made a difference.

Oh, my goodness...

Oh, God, I'm so happy.

Now I can die happily.

Because now I know I'll see him,

even in a bone, or an ash,
or whatever it is.

In this section of the cemetery,

each tombstone covers a mass grave.

More than 200 people
are thought to lie here,

including Ascensión's father.

DIED DEFENDING
DEMOCRACY AND FREEDOM

The bullet holes
can still be seen on the wall.

For 40 years,
this part of the cemetery was closed off.

Family members would
throw flowers over the wall

and cry against it.

Right at the entrance
of the same cemetery,

a monument honors
the many Franco supporters

who were killed during the war.

Franco is buried
in the biggest monument of all.

The Valley of the Fallen.

Spain is full of mass graves.

By the side of roads.

In cemeteries.

In the middle of fields.

In the year 2000, historic memory
organizations started to form,

funded by the victims themselves.

Since then,

without a single judicial order,

8,000 men and women have been exhumed.

But over 100,000 are still waiting.

We are here for the DNA.

For the DM.

- D-N-A.
- DMA.

- N, N.
- M, N.

The DNA.

- The DNA.
- DNA.

Yes, and why are they taking yours?

To see if I'm my father's daughter.

That's right.

That your father is your father,
and you're his daughter.

Because there are a lot of other people
buried with him.

Full name?

Iluminada Ascensión Mendieta Ibarra.

Please open your mouth.

My mouth?

I'll scrape the inside of your cheek.

- Should I take out my dentures?
- No, it's not necessary.

That's it.

Wow. Thank you.

- Your delivery was normal, right?
- Normal.

A perfect birth.

The doctor comes in,

takes my baby,
turns his back on me and walks out.

They don't explain anything.

They don't put a wristband
on me or my baby.

- They took the baby.
- They took my baby.

- And did you see him again?
- No. Never again.

He says... "Your baby is dead."

- Did they give you a medical report?
- No, there's nothing.

My case is very similar to yours.

The modus operandi...

They're like photocopies...

God, how can we live with this truth
hidden in our hearts?

Our cases are being closed.
They're being shelved.

I'd like to be able to stand
in front of a judge...

Yes, you can.

I did, outside Spain,
through the Argentine lawsuit.

We have lawyers who work for free.

The lawsuit may or may not succeed.

But at least I have a door open.

...his brother was killed by the fascists
an obvious case of forced disappearance

In the lawsuit, we've gathered

the names of doctors, midwives and nuns
who abducted children.

Names of companies
that profited from slave labor.

We can't wait any longer
to present indictments,

powerful ones.

We have names of ministers...
like Martín Villa,

who was a cabinet minister
during the dictatorship

and then Deputy Prime Minister
in the democracy.

The Argentine judge has come to Spain.

She petitioned the Spanish government,
who sent it to local courts in Spain

where she took testimony.

This measure was unprecedented.

Let me give you a kiss.

And my gratitude...
for everything you're doing.

I've listened to 167 testimonies.

And we are moved by this.

The emotion touches us, but...

we must stay cool and objective.

The darkest chapter in our history
is being examined by the UN.

This includes recommendations

to annul the effects
of the 1977 Amnesty Law.

Because the victims,
rightly, do not forget.

EXTRADITE THE TORTURERS

Tomorrow, "Billy the Kid"
will have to appear in National Court

for his extradition hearing.

He has been summoned for crimes of torture
of 13 people from 1968 to '75.

...the dictator...

...not a single one...

...justice...

I've never told Justa any of this.

It's almost... shameful.

They took my wife there,
she was three months pregnant,

and to force her to say,
"Do it for me and for the baby,"

they punched her in the belly.

Thirteen hours straight.

They ended up
tearing off my skin in strips.

As "Billy the Kid"
and his henchmen told me,

"Don't get your hopes up.

Nothing will happen to us.

What's more, we will be
the police of the future."

I felt like a rag doll,

tossed from left to right,
forwards and backwards.

The only thing that kept me standing
were the blows my body received,

as if they were competing
in how to beat me so I wouldn't fall.

I was trembling so much,
in such pain and panic,

that I couldn't tell
if my feet ever touched the ground.

They handcuffed me behind my back.

Holding my hair, they beat my head

against the edge of a table.

What scared me most
was that I might "sing."

The way to resist was to imagine a scene.

There was the same table,
the same killers beating me,

but around us were my friends,
my father...

The people I loved most.

And I couldn't let them down.

That was the way to endure it.

But they slowly faded
when you realized you were naked,

that they were beating your buttocks,
the soles of your feet,

your genitals.

I remember I thought,
"You'll never have sex again."

I was 22... and had just had
my first experience.

I wasn't even a person,
not even an animal.

I was just a thing.

Just there at 22, really scared
and determined to endure,

endure out of rage.

I tell you in earnest...

not even for my political convictions.

But out of rage.

Because I was a human being.

For many years,
we only wanted to erase from our heads

all that time of bitterness...

and repression. I don't know...

Perhaps all of us...

perhaps we have all
collaborated in that silence.

But that's something you realize later.

People don't forget so easily.

Even if they want to, it's not easy.

Extradite the torturers!

Antonio González Pacheco,

do you consent to your image
being recorded by the media?

I do not consent.

The cameras will be allowed
to record briefly from behind,

and we'll allow audio recording.

Do you know the acts you are indicted for?

Yes.

Do you consent to be turned in
to be tried in Argentina?

Absolutely not.

With your permission, Your Honor.

The Amnesty Law would eliminate

any hypothetical responsibility
that might arise.

Therefore, we request
the complete rejection

of the extradition order
for Mr. Antonio González Pacheco.

Show your face, coward!

Murderer!

No Spanish TV channel
has ever recorded his face... until now.

It's Juan Antonio González Pacheco,
also known as "Billy the Kid."

Hello, Mr. Pacheco,
I have a few questions for you.

- Leave me alone.
- Listen, please.

Do you know the Argentine judiciary
has requested your extradition?

Leave me alone!

Have you ever considered
apologizing after 40 years?

Leave me alone.

One thing that makes me particularly angry

is when people say,
"No, you're just motivated by revenge."

You can only think I'm looking for revenge

if you think that looking for justice
is looking for revenge.

Forgiveness is an individual matter.

A state cannot forgive crimes.

Forgetting doesn't lead to forgiveness...

It generates more hatred.

No one has ever asked us for forgiveness.

People don't ask,
they demand that you forgive.

You can't forgive.

You can forget, but you can't forgive.

Of course I forgive you.

You, the physical person
who did something horrible

because you were serving
a regime that tortured me.

But I demand justice.

Because I was condemned illegally
and you went scot-free.

The National Court
won't extradite to Argentina

the ex-policeman known as "Billy the Kid."

The judges hold that the alleged crimes

have passed the statute of limitations
and are not crimes against humanity.

Repeal the Amnesty Law!

Universal justice from Latin America!

Crimes against humanity
never, ever have a statute of limitations.

We, and hundreds of thousands of victims,

have been denied the right to justice.

Thank you.

She couldn't...

Life got the better of her.

She left without achieving...
everything she fought for.

She wanted to be there
with her mother's remains by her side.

Big news, people.

Judge Servini has ordered the detention,

for the... investigating inquiry,
of 20 people.

One of them is Martín Villa,
and also Utrera Molina.

That's so great!

Martín Villa!

That's great!

- We have to move it...
- That means all of them.

Did you hear?
I just received the judge's ruling.

I'll send it over.

I'm more and more convinced
that justice will be served.

We think that this clamor
against impunity will grow...

Judge Servini has ordered the detention

of 20 cabinet ministers,
one doctor accused of stealing babies,

judges, lawyers and a former
Deputy Prime Minister, Martín Villa.

I want to testify before the judge.

The best solution is for the judge
to come to Spain

to interrogate those she has indicted.

The Spanish judiciary must allow me
to take their statements.

If they authorize me, I'll come.

The doctor who treated me is now charged,
thanks to the Argentine lawsuit.

It's a step closer to knowing the truth.

We're asking for justice and truth.

It's all we have left.

My goodness, you're famous!

I'm so overwhelmed.

- Oh, my goodness.
- Hold on tight.

I'm really overwhelmed.

Do you wish that you
hadn't needed to travel 10,000 km

to make this happen?

But I did, and I was 88.

I would do it again if I had to.

These are all mass graves.

This is a mass grave,
this is another mass grave...

Separate mass graves,
one next to the other.

Is my whole team here?

We'll make a perimeter, as always.

Those who are working in the grave,
you know who you are.

Object one...

Projectile.

The first body

shows clear evidence
of having been murdered.

From here on, it's going to be slow work.

So, it'll take a few days...

We'll need several days.

Have you ever seen
a grave this deep before?

In a cemetery, never.

They had clearly planned
how many people they wanted to put inside.

Opening a grave with 22 people

means that many other families
can recover those remains.

We are Tomás Vicente Lorente's relatives,

and we've come to claim him, of course.

I have my father there, number 13.

My uncle was 28, a kid.

There, there's a 25-year-old shepherd.

There's no explanation.

Because if people
fight each other in a war,

that's just how it is.

But to be executed later just because
you think differently, it's outrageous.

Honorable...

...of the Supreme... Court...

in Madrid.

It was hard for me to get involved.

It's easier to get on with your life
and not get into this mess.

ARGENTINIAN LAWSUIT

...and with all the pain of my heart...

...regards from...

...from this woman...

...who is still waiting...

...for pigs...

...to fly.

EMBASSY OF ARGENTINA IN SPAIN

My mother never
would have imagined that I...

that I'd get so involved.

She'd be very proud.

I believe if the Spanish judges
heard what I've heard,

they would open more cases here.

That's what happened in Chile,
with Pinochet.

They refused to investigate
until it reached a certain point,

that with all the evidence
that had been gathered,

they sentenced him.

I believe that in the long run...

you'll be successful
in making them investigate here.

Many universal jurisdiction cases
never make it to trial,

but they can spark changes
within the country being investigated.

Despite resistance,

several regional governments
have passed laws to acknowledge victims,

exhume mass graves,
and investigate the stolen children.

Perhaps we are finally ready to remember.

The debate about war,
or violence during a dictatorship

should never be confined to
the private sphere.

It must take place
within democratic institutions.

That's why today is a big day
of democratic maturity.

The streets we'll rename will be,

"Hail Spain" Square,
Franco's motto par excellence.

Square of "The Leader."

Avenue of the Arc of Victory.

General Yagüe Street.

That's mine, that's mine.

Now we vote on the original text.

Citizens Party?

In favor.

Okay.

Socialist Party?

In favor.

Popular Party?

Against.

Against.

Okay. Madrid Now Platform?

In favor.

The proposal is approved,
thank you everyone.

- Are you okay?
- I'm okay.

Slowly.

Calmly.

Let's go closer.

- The time has come.
- The time has come.

Look, Mom.

Where it says 19...

Poor thing, my dear father.

A whole life underground, dear father.

Mom, you wanted to see him.
You saw him now.

It's okay.

Yes, I wanted to. I'm okay.

TIMOTEO MENDIETA ALCALÁ
NOVEMBER 15 1939

Lost peace

Lost cause

Lost dreams

Lost homeland

Lost to everyone

Lost to Spain

In no man's land

In fields of rage

Here they come

Spain's children

Where one song dies out

Mine rises up