Report: "The Salamanca blood papers"

1 INTRODUCTION
The return of documents stolen from Catalonia and currently withheld at the General Civil War Archive at Salamanca is a legitimate aspiration that aims to set right an anomalous situation created during the Civil War (1936-1939) by the Franco regime, which dispersed the archives by way of their spoliation.

Both from the point of view of archive technique and political ethics, to achieve the documents' return would be a democratic and just act in line with the spirit kindled at the beginning of Spain's democratization process which was to compensate for some of the wrongs suffered at the hands of the Franco regime, such as occurred with the law of political amnesty, economic compensation for individuals who had rendered services to the institutions of the Second Republic (1931-1939), or the return of property confiscated by the regime.

This return would be in standing with common practice in other states in the European Union, as was the case of the archives confiscated by the nazis and returned by the Allies to France, Belgium and Holland in 1945, or the Foreign Ministry and III Reich Chancellery documents returned by the United Kingdom to Gerrmany between 1956 and 1958. More recently, in 1992, the United States returned Foreign Ministry documents from the 1918-1940 period to Poland.

2 HOW THE SPOLIATION PROCESS BEGAN

During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), documents generated in Catalonia by the public institutions, amongst others by the Catalan Government (Generalitat de Catalunya) and private concerns, as well as significant personalities from the political and cultural spheres, were confiscated by Franco's troops as they occupied Catalonia from April 1938 onwards. The objective of this confiscation was to find out from the documents, the names of people who had dealings with the Republican regime so as to accuse them of being enemies of the new military regime.

The documents were first confiscated by the "Special Affairs Office" (Delegación de Asuntos Especiales) as from 1937, and later by the "Office for the Recovery, Classification and Custody of Documents originating in People and Bodies of the Republican Side". They were moved to the Convent of San Ambrosio in Salamanca, the present headquarters of the General Civil War Archives.

3 INSTITUTIONS AFFECTED

In this way, the Catalan Government, and different public and private institutions had their archives and documents seized. Apart from the Catalan Government (1931-1939), several Catalan cities' archives were affected, as occurred with those of Barcelona, Lleida, Reus, Sort,Tarragona, amongst others.
The archives of the leading democratic political organizations and trade unions of the period, including CNT-AIT, JLL, PSUC, JSU, CADCI, UGT, USC, POUM, ERC, as well as the Sindicato de Profesiones Liberales, Unión Repúblicana de Valls, Sindicato Único de la Sanidad, Sindicato Único Regional de Luz y Fuerza de Cataluña, Asociación de Trabajadores Agrícolas, etc. were all affected, as were those of associations such as Socors Roig Internacional (SRI), i Solidaritat Internacional Antifeixista (SIA).

4 MISSING DOCUMENTS

The range of documents affected by the spoliation is as follows:
Ò Catalan Government (Generalitat de Catalunya), 507 document
lots in the following matters:
The Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia, Presidents' Departament, Justice (reformatory services, administration of justice and defence documents) Finance and Economy, Agriculture, Labour and Public Works, Culture, Sports and Broadcasting, Health and Social Assistance, Madrid Office, Home Security (Local Administration, General Comissariat for Public Order), Catalan Parliament.
Ò Documents from the afore-mentioned City Councils, political parties, unions and associations that are to be found in the Lleida and Barcelona Political-Social Section of the Archivo Histórico Nacional Sección Guerra Civil, of the current Archivo General de la Guerra Civil (General Civil War Archive), in Salamanca.
Ò Documents from the mason archives of Catalonia.

5 ARCHIVE INCONGRUENCE

According to the theory of archive science, an archive is a series of documents of different natures that have been gathered together by an authorized person or body in the exercise of their activities or functions.

According to this definition, the Republican Catalan Government and the other institutions' document archives must include all the documents that were generated without any kind of exception. Thus a thematic archive such as the one set up at the Genral Civil War Archive at Salamanca lies outside that definition, because it conserves, amongst other things, documents that were spoliated by the repressive bodies of the Franco regime.

To disperse different institutional documents to make up an artificial collection associated with a particular matter goes against the principles of archive science both as regards procedure (dispersal of documents produced or received by an institution) and as a result (artificial accumulation). For this reason the existence of thematic archives is not seen as possible. Other similar projects have already been criticized at an international level, as was the case of the attempt to create a Great War archive (1914-1919) in Italy.

6 THE JUST NATURE OF THIS DEMAND

The International Archive Council, a body forming part of UNESCO, has repeatedly stated the right of the legitimate owners to demand the return of documents that have been the object of spoliation or robbery arising from armed conflict (Resolution 46/10 of the 1991 UNO General Assembly). The call for the return of documents taken from Catalonia by fascist troops is the legitimate right of a democratic society.
The current Spanish democratic government has yet to settle the damage caused by the Franco regime to different institutions, personalities and bodies in Catalonia, and internationally acknowledged principles regarding the return of documents moved in an armed conflict have yet to be applied.

7 THE PRAISEWORTHY PRECEDENT OF THE BASQUE GOVERNMENT

In contrast with the retention of documents at Salamanca, the case of the return of Catalan Government documents by the Basques stands out. They had been kept among the historical documents of the Basque Nationalist Party at Villa Izarra (Bayonne,French Basque Country). Once pinpointed by Abertzaletasunaren Agiritegia, the Basque Nationalism Archive, agreements signed between the Sabino Arana Foundation and Catalan bodies ensured the prompt return of these documents soon after their study and digitalization by the Catalan Government. The majority had been generated in the last stages of the Civil War and also at the Layetana Office which the Generalitat had set up in Paris. An agreement signed on February 9th 2001 permanently granted the documents to the Catalans as part of the initiatives promoted by the President Companys Comission. The return was completed in February 2002.

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