Reconciliation without justice? Victims' rights and the challenges of imposed closure in Spain

When exploring what reconciliation means in a post-conflict society the first hurdle is to attempt to define it. There is no single accepted definition of reconciliation after conflict.¹ It is both a vague and morally loaded concept,² which encompasses a range of processes and mechanisms through which individuals and social groups interact after mass violence.³ Reconciliation means different things in different cultures, or even at different levels within a society or culture.⁴ At the individual level, reconciliation can occur, or not, as part of a wider process of social reconstruction of a community, which implies repairing intergroup relationships, transforming communities and eliminating social tensions.⁵ At a societal or group level reconciliation involves, as Stover and Weinstein have argued, the reconfiguration of identity, revisiting prior social roles, searching for a common identity, agreeing to unified memories (if not new foundational myths) and the development of collaborative relationships that allow for difference.⁶ Reconciliation is not a static concept and therefore what a society understands by reconciliation⁷ is open to change. As Rebekka Friedman has described in relation to what she terms procedural reconciliation, this is ‘a long term and ongoing process of setting out and consolidating common parameters through which actors and communities can articulate grievances and pursue distinct (and often competing) grievances and claims.’⁸ As she highlights, despite this variability and open-endedness, what is important is the long-term cumulative consolidation of effects over time.⁹