The widespread rejection of the amnesty law agreed by the PSOE and the Catalan nationalists, which reaches between 50% and 70% of Spaniards, could lead one to think that this is an unprecedented phenomenon. Especially if this level of citizen rejection is compared to the broad support that the amnesty approved during the democratic transition in 1977 supposedly would have had. However, surveys from the time reveal some chiaroscuros that question the supposed unanimity around a measure. of grace that sought to culminate national reconciliation after a devastating civil war and four decades of dictatorship.
In this sense, Franco’s death led to a succession of pardon measures that culminated in the amnesty law of October 1977. The first of these measures was the so-called “coronation pardon,” which basically meant a reduction in sentences and which excluded terrorist crimes. We had to wait until the summer of 1976, with Adolfo Suárez in the Government, for an amnesty to be approved that covered “all crimes and lack of political intentionality” as long as they had not “endangered people’s lives.”
Well, this measure of grace that left out the terrorists already satisfied half of the Spaniards (the data is from the CIS), while only 14% rejected it and the rest (34%) were indifferent or not. was pronounced. Of course, skepticism increased when questions were asked about the contribution of the amnesty to national reconciliation. Only 40% considered that the approval of the measure would be positive for the reunion between Spaniards, while one in four did not recognize a positive value and almost a third did not express themselves.
Now, the antagonisms that Spaniards showed towards those pardon measures can be seen with special clarity in the polls carried out shortly before the promulgation of the “total amnesty”, in October 1977, approved by almost 300 of the 350 deputies of the first democratic Cortes. This amnesty, it should be remembered, affected “all acts of political intention, whatever their result” and meant the release of dozens of terrorists with blood crimes (who in several cases returned to violent activism).
From there, the paradox lay in the fact that only a third of Spaniards (not including the citizens of Euskadi) thought that the grace measures adopted up to that moment (October 1977) “should be expanded”; that is, a rate of 33% that fell to less than half among the conservative electorate. And the most significant thing: only one in ten consulted defended the extension of the amnesty to include political crimes “whatever their result”; that is, “violence against the life and integrity of people.”
It is also true that only 16% of Spaniards considered the measures adopted until then “sufficient”, while one in ten even described them as “excessive” (a percentage that exceeded 31% among right-wing voters). But be careful: up to 40% did not speak out. And when asked about the requirements to extend an eventual amnesty, only 17% agreed to apply it to terrorists who did not commit to “definitively renouncing violence.”
In this sense, more than 60% of those consulted (and 70% of the center and right-wing electorate) supported a “total” and definitive amnesty, but limited only to those who renounce violence. Even in the Basque Country, 45% demanded the renunciation of terrorism, compared to 31% who supported indiscriminate forgiveness. And when the fine print of the pardon measure was examined, only 42% clearly supported a genuine amnesty, compared to almost 30% who preferred a pardon.
In short, the 1977 amnesty law had limited support from the Spanish people, at least in relation to its scope and the requirements for the release of terrorists. Not even a measure of that caliber – and to turn the page on the worst Spain – was exempt from the centuries-old divisions that relentlessly pursue Spanish society.
