Revisión, trascendencia constitucional y memoria histórica

Abstract

Appeal by review (revisión) against judgment, that has already gained res judicata, is an extraordinary remedy based upon reasons of Justice. When this appeal by review is used for the annulment of judgments of Franco dictatorship, this well known statement had been in the past, and has been nowadays, a very controversial issue politically, doctrinally and jurisprudentially. This critical paper analyses the Spanish Supreme Court's opinion uphold in this matter to deny the previous authorisation, which is requiered for filing the petition of the appeal by review. The Supreme Court based its decision on a alleged lack of purpose for this review procedure because when the Historical Memory Law declares injustice and illegitimacy of those sentences, this Law deprives them also of their legal effect. This answer, as we explained in the following pages, violates the due process (as a fundamental right of effective judicial protection) in two of its specific dimensions: the right of access to the courts and judicial procedure and the right to a decision based in law, but also indirectly affects the presumption of innocence. In order to illustrate this review we decided to do it through a specific case, which involves a paradigmatic victim of Franco's regime, the poet Miguel Hernández and his family to whom the Spanish Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court have closed inexplicably their doors for Justice.