Historical Memory Law

"[n 1] It was passed by the Congress of Deputies on 31 October 2007,[1] on the basis of a bill proposed by the PSOE government of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

In a 152-page statement, he passed responsibility to regional courts for opening 19 mass graves believed to hold the remains of hundreds of victims.

For example, the leader of the Popular Party Mariano Rajoy claimed while in opposition that Garzón's attempt to compile a list of victims would needlessly open up old wounds.

[3] The conservative Popular Party government of Mariano Rajoy, which was in power from 2011 until 2018, neither repealed nor amended the Historical Memory Law but largely ignored it.

[10] In 2020, El Pais reported that the Pedro Sánchez administration was working on the draft of a new historical memory law that would include a DNA database and an official list of Civil War victims.