There are events and people who deserve their place in history. The other victims. The police violence during the Transition (1975-1982) of David Ballester, essayist and doctor in Contemporary History from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ??provides them with that place. Published by Presses of the University of Zaragoza, the book provides unpublished research to date. It is a detailed analysis of an area often overlooked in the general account of the Transition: the 134 victims of police violence.
“There was no detailed and rigorous study of the victims of police violence during this period,” says Ballester. “Normally the victims of the extreme right were mixed with those of terrorism or the last executed by Franco’s regime were put in the same bag… There was a historiographical gap that had to be filled”, she points out. With this book, the author has wanted to “make a rigorous and exhaustive list, without exaggeration, because also in this area we sometimes find ourselves with an ideological discourse in the sense of the more, the better”, although he also admits that there could be more cases .
The other victims analyzes this police violence establishing three parameters: the easy trigger, the victims in the repression of mobilizations of all kinds and those who suffered from the practice of torture. The work offers figures and statistics, in addition to the proper contextualization of the historical period and a chapter dedicated to the police forces. Likewise, the reader is presented with the records of each and every one of the victims. “There is an important part that is downloaded using a QR code and presents individualized files with the aim of providing as much information as possible,” says Ballester.
This book sheds light on an officially idealized political period, but also full of shadows since it was not as idyllic as it is conveyed in some official speeches. These victims lost their lives due to the continuous police excesses that took place between November 20, 1975 and December 2, 1982. “Events that happened in the streets and in police stations, without the different governments of the period acting with the necessary diligence to put an end to this type of human rights violations,” the author affirms.
In an initial chapter, Ballester asks himself if the Transition was exemplary or immodest, peaceful or violent. “For a significant part of the period there was no democracy, and once parliamentary and then constitutional rule was achieved, it was not a pristine product,” he says in the book. For him, the fact that it has “obvious spots and gray areas does not necessarily imply that its democratic essence is questioned. “Police violence was not modulated until democratic institutions were taking shape and political change was materialized,” he remarks.
After reflecting on some key aspects of the Transition, the author analyzes the evolution of the police forces during that period, also protagonists of this story, and the necessary transformation that would have had to take place in their ranks. “The absence of any purge in the police forces, together with a notable lack of decision and courage on the part of political leaders, made the police sphere one of the most lacerating blemishes of the democratization process,” Ballester points out. In fact, as he points out, “they cannot be separated from an institutional framework on which they depended.”
Of the list of fatalities, the category of easy trigger would include 91 cases, the most frequent. It is followed by the repression in the street, with 38 deaths, and then the five victims who died after being subjected to torture. Furthermore, these 134 people were gene from all walks of life. In fact, only one held a public position, councilor in a small town, and two others belonged to a terrorist organization. Less than a fifth of the total, 23 people, were active in a political or trade union organization.
After numerous examples, the book shows that the constant excesses and abuses of various members of the different police forces –with methods inherited from the dictatorship– spread throughout all corners of the Spanish geography. One of the transversal characteristics of all the cases is “the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators,” the historian points out in the book. A situation that was accompanied by the defenselessness in which the victims and their families were left.
“These are people who have been forgotten. The daughter of a victim told me: ‘No one has ever approached us to ask what happened to us,’ says the author. In this sense, Ballester points out that “today only remedial measures have been recently established by some autonomous communities.” The researcher, with this work, shows the invisibility that these victims have had for decades. For him, neither justice was done at the time nor now.
The pressure of relatives and memorial organizations and the role of some media have made this issue, years later, arouse some interest in society. But the lack of recognition shows that the shadow of the dictatorship is still long and that the current democracy is still lacking. “I believe that the Democratic Memory Law, to be complete, should recognize the victims of police violence during the Transition. And, modestly, I would like this book to help in this regard”, he concludes.
