The two-day symposium "The Difficult Legacy of the 20th Century. Coping with the Ibero-American Dictatorships" discussed the coming to terms with dictatorships in the democratic societies of Portugal, Spain, Argentina, Brazil and Chile. In his introduction, host Prof. Dr. Peter Hoeres problematized the subject area of transitional justice - dealing with dictatorships in the form of investigative commissions, legal processes, indeminfication payments, lustrations in the police, military and security services, but also through mediating the problematic past in the education system, cultural artifacts and by establishing museums, monuments and memorials. In this context, Hoeres conceded a paradox of remembrance policy. The longer the dictatorships were gone, the more rigorously and critically they were treated, promoted by a simplified demarcation through the change of generations. 

In this respect, the democratic transitions after the collapse of the right-wing authoritarian regimes of the Ibero-American states represent a special object of observation. In his lecture on the constitutional legacy of the Pinochet dictatorship, Prof. Dr. Detlef Nolte presented survey data and statistics that showed how divided the Chilean population remains on the issues of the military coup of September 11, 1973 and the legitimacy of the Unidad Popular government of President Salvador Allende. Dr. Nina Schneider illustrated the indifference of Brazilian society towards the twenty-year military dictatorship, while Prof. Dr. Walther L. Bernecker underlined the special case of Spain, where the entrenchments of the Spanish Civil War are reactivated for current political debates.

Orethodox transitional justice measures were only implemented in Argentina, while in Spain, Brazil and Chile amnesty regulations protected the old regime elites from prosecution. In Spain –as the presentations by Dr. Ulrike Capdepón and Prof. Dr. Walther L. Bernecker showed – the laws on historical memory (2007) and democratic memory (2022) laid the foundations for delegitimizing the jurisdiction of the Franco regime. In Brazil, a truth commission unearthed the crimes of the military regime, but this did, however,  not lead to any legal consequences. In the case of Chile, the Pinochet Constitution of 1980 is still in force. For Portugal, Joe David Green and Holger Kohler showed softer measures of transitional justice such as the transformation of public space in Lisbon and the musealization of the former concentration camp Tarrafal in Cape Verde.

The conference also focused on regional aspects of the process of coming to terms with the past. Dr. Nina Schneider explained the coexistence of the official national truth commission and regional civil society committees in Brazil, while Prof. Dr. Ludger Mees addressed the longue durée of Basque nationalism.

On a transnational level, Dr. Ulrike Capdepón showed how the Pinochet trial (1998) and the Argentine lawsuit against human rights crimes of the Franco dictatorship (since 2010) triggered debates about the dictatorial past in Spain. The contributions by Dr. Antonio Muñoz Sánchez and Dr. Lasse B. Lassen, on the other hand, highlighted the influence of the German Federal Republic on the transition processes in Spain and Portugal. Elite co-optation, party collaborations and politicla coordination in multilateral forums were used to bar the ambitious Iberian CPs from power.

While the victim groups of the right-wing authoritarian dictatorships in Portugal, Spain, Argentina, Brazil and Chile were primarily oppositional socialists and communists, the presentations by Dr. Nina Schneider, Prof. Dr. Ludger Mees and Holger Kohler showed how other victim groups increasingly pressed for their stories to be told. Indigenous Brazilians, Basque nationalists and African freedom fighters did not allow socialists and communists to monopolize the via cruxis of resistance for themselves.

With the 50th anniversaries of the Chilean coup d'état of September 11, 1973, the Portuguese Carnation Revolution of April 25, 1974, and the death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco on November 20, 1975 just around the corner, the most intense political controversies over the material, institutional, and ideological legacy of the Iberian dictatorships are to be expected. The debate about coming to terms with the Ibero-American dictatorships will certainly not abate in the long term.