Freedom of Research and Impunity of Dictatorship: Constitutional Jurisprudence Adrift

Abstract

This paper’s starting point is the evidence of impunity for the crimes of the Francoist dictatorship, essentially due to a judicial regime that has blocked the access of victims and their descendants to justice. It focuses on the responsibility that may fall on the Constitutional Court in its capacity as protector of rights, since it aims at confining the question of Francoist criminality in the field of history to extract it out of the realm of law. Some regional governments, such as Navarre, resolutely take the opposite path, against which the coverage of impunity by the Constitutional Court leads to extremes of degradation of its proceedings bearing the risk of delegitimisation of its jurisprudence.