Right back to the past

The world abounds with ex-communists; ex-fascists, however, are a rare species. Arthur Koestler, Jorge Semprún - offhand one could name heaps of people who turned their backs on communism, and contributed to the critique of totalitarianism.

In the fascist universe such people are few and far between. After Franco's death the Spanish fascists, with a few honorable exceptions, slipped easily into democratic clothing, seeing no need to give any explanation at all of their past behavior. Indeed, many have boasted of their past service to Franco's regime.

Manuel Fraga was one of these. He always prided himself on having worked for a regime that he never referred to as a dictatorship. Fraga, the regime's energetic propaganda chief and information minister, also played a role in the Spanish right's later attempts to whitewash the dictatorship, as if it had been an inevitable state of emergency. He never gave any explanations, perhaps because he never changed, believing that between the sociological grassroots of fascism and the conservative "natural majority" on which he founded his dream of power, there was no very great distance.

Death is cosmetic. When someone dies, a spiral of silence is generated, showing only his best profile and passing over the wrong he did. It's a way we have of handling the terrible feeling of injustice that goes with death. But when we are looking at a public person, 60 years on the public scene, the ritual of praise may turn grotesque. To say, like Núñez Feijóo (Fraga's political heir as Galician premier) that Fraga had the bad luck to have grown up under a repressive regime is pathetically touching. Lots of us grew up under that regime, and we did not become fascists, or serve the dictator. To say, like Rajoy, that Fraga loved liberty raises doubts as to what our new prime minister understands as liberty. Even a few voices of the left have joined the chorus.

No doubt Fraga played a role in getting the Spanish right to accept democracy, when he saw that the new way was irreversible. Don't forget that in the first democratic elections he ran at the head of his rightist party - a spectacular brochette of fascists. Indeed the Socialists may thank him for this. Felipe González could hardly have imagined being up against a rival so unpalatable to the electorate.

The farewell to Fraga has reminded us of the weight of certain taboos that date from the transition to democracy. We are still afraid of speaking ill of evil, of calling the dictatorship by its name. In the funeral eulogies we have just been hearing, clever euphemisms for dictatorship abound. Indeed Fraga is a sort of symbol of a democracy hobbled by its inability to face the past.

Providence has seen fit that Fraga's passing should coincide with the beginning of Judge Garzón's appearances in the defendant's dock. To watch a trial scene where the engineers of the Gürtel graft network and the heads of the fascist party are cast as victims, and the judge who caught the grafters and defied the judicial taboo on the fascist past is cast as their persecutor casts a deep shadow on Spanish institutions. It takes us right back to that fascist past, and is incomprehensible to much of the foreign press. The flimsiness of the accusations against Garzón, not even supported by the public prosecutor; the tenacity of his pursuers; and the judge's well-known record project a deeply regressive image of Spanish justice.

The only positive thing about this episode is the message that judges are indeed human and erring, moved often by resentments, vanities and hatreds. What could be scarier than a perfect judge - as lots of them believe they are? And head-on collisions happen, such as in the present case. Democracy is made by human beings. Only dictatorships are built of perfect men.