What Spain continues hiding 58 years later

Human rights cannot wait for the next legislature, parliamentary groups must approve the Classified Information law. The recent declassification of 23F documents demonstrates that informing society about our past is possible and desirable. The problem is that declassification remains the exception. In Spain, too many matters continue to be secret because their coming to light still depends on the mere will of the government protected by a Francoist law.

Indeed, in 2026 we continue to be governed by the Official Secrets Act of 1968, which allows the State to classify information at its discretion and, if it wishes, forever. This clashes head-on with international standards, which establish that information on human rights violations is of public interest and should not be classified for security reasons under any circumstances.

It is also enough to look around us to see how outdated we are in relation to countries around us. France sets a general term of 50 years; United Kingdom of 20, with periodic reviews; Germany, 30; Italy, between 15 and 30 years and, furthermore, excluding that terrorism or mafia crimes can be hidden under state secrecy. Spain, on the other hand, remains in the last car.

It's not for nothing that Amnesty International, we have been demanding for years the end of this law, converted into an umbrella of impunity: it was for the past and it is also for the present.

The most eloquent present example is the arms trade. Currently and since 1987, the minutes of the Interministerial Board that authorizes the Spanish government's arms sales are secret according to the 1968 law. It is impossible to know how the Government applies, in specific cases, the criteria for evaluating the risk of using those weapons to commit or facilitate serious human rights violations, nor what reasons lead it to grant or deny a license. The decision and the minutes of the Interministerial Board that deals with the issue are secret.

This situation prevents the legislative power from controlling the action of the executive and civil society from accessing key information and challenging before justice, where appropriate, the granting of licenses that may violate international law and Spanish legislation itself.

Something similar happens with the police infiltration operations in social movements. When the Ministry of Interior was questioned in Parliament after ‘Directa’ uncovered these operations, in addition to recognizing and endorsing them, Interior stated it did not have to reveal more information under the Official Secrets Act.

And in relation to our past and our collective memory, andalready in 2014 United Nations expressed concern over the fact that historical documents and large military and police archives from the Civil War and Francoism remained classified and without clear criteria allowing their declassification, under the pretext of risks to national security and in application of the Official Secrets Act.

It is true that since then some military funds have been declassified, but always according to the Ministry of Defense's own and exclusive criteria; and that the Democratic Memory Law of 2022 expressly ordered to leave behind the Official Secrets Law, a mandate not yet fulfilled. Unfortunately, access to information about human rights violations committed during Francoism continues to encounter obstacles.

All these examples show that, currently, issues of enormous relevance in human rights matters are not available to the citizenry, in open contradiction with international standards and with our right  as a society to know: to know about our past and also about our present.

The bill for a new Classified Information Law remains stalled in Congress, in the amendment phase since September 2025. Even with room for improvement, it is undoubtedly a great advance compared to the Francoist law of 1968: it establishes maximum classification periods (up to 45 years, extendable by 15 more in cases of “top secret”), provides for the automatic declassification of information classified before 1980 —which should imply the disclosure of documentation from Francoism and the Transition— and stipulates that information related to major human rights violations or crimes against humanity cannot be subject to classification.

There is no time to lose. Human rights cannot wait for the next legislature, just as key documents to know the truth about human rights violations, past and present, cannot continue to be secret. As Fabián Salvioli, former UN rapporteur, told us, confronting our history is not a partisan issue, but a human rights obligation. We are late. It's time to get to work.