Within comparative political sciences, the Spanish transition has been oft en praised as a model to follow. Spain's democratisation process has been presented as one of the most peaceful and successful democratic transitions in the recent decades. The traumatic memory of the population after a cruel civil war and a long-lasting dictatorship was not easy to overcome. However, for many authors, the democratisation process facilitated ‘national reconciliation’ among Spaniards. According to the same thesis, the basis for the peaceful and successful stabilisation of democracy in Spain was precisely the decision to leave behind the thorniest aspects of the past.

In the last years, however, different voices have been increasingly claiming that the Spanish transition was not as exemplary as it has been portrayed, mainly because it failed to provide justice and truth to the victims of Francoism. Moreover, and contrary to the most accepted version, it was not a peaceful process either; indeed, political violence was among the features of the democratisation period. Beyond mere description, many of those who defend this new reading of the Spanish transition also claim that it is still necessary today to correct the deficiencies inherited from that period in terms of accountability, truth, and reparations.

In this chapter, we examine in detail the origins and later evolution of transitional justice (hereafter, TJ) in Spain, with the aim of contributing to this discussion by looking into how such TJ framework has been progressively evolving in the Spanish case. In the first section we will present the most relevant historical and legal antecedents of TJ policies in Spain before Francoism. In the second section, we will discuss the irruption of TJ policies during the Spanish democratic regime established from Franco's death in 1975 until the creation of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (Asociacion para la Recuperacion de la Memoria Historica, ARMH) in 2000. In the third section, we will deal with what have been called the post-TJ period, which started in 2000, reaching a peak in 2007 with the approval of the so-called “Historical Memory Law” and remains open until today. In the fourth section, we will offer an overview of the state of Spanish political culture regarding the past. Finally, we will end the chapter with a conclusive summary section.