ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses Spanish transitional justice through the perspective of amnesty and pardons. The idea of amnesty is formalised by criminal law, and administered by public institutions to address a specific political circumstance, as a way of extinguishing sentences and all their effects. The 2007 Historical Memory Law failed to satisfy the demands of the victims in full, among other reasons because it vindicated the Amnesty Law and therefore legitimised the impunity of Francoist criminals. Pardons and amnesty do not sit well with equality and a separation of powers in consolidated democracies. The current doctrine is very critical of pardons, as it considers them antithetical to the separation of powers that is an inherent aspect of every democracy. The history of transitional and post-transitional justice goes beyond the confines of the legal framework and the judicial-political and socioeconomic strategies implemented by the institutions of power as reparation for past human rights violations.
