"In Spain, when democracy gradually took root after General Franco's death in 1975, there was an unspoken agreement—the pacto del olvido—to forget the trauma of the Civil War and the years of repression that followed. In recent decades, though, writers, historians, and filmmakers began to explore the horrors of the war and, in November 2007, the government enacted the Law of Historic Memory. There is to be a national effort to locate the mass graves and identify the bones of those who were shot by Franco’s winning side. Franco’s regime itself has been formally repudiated and it will be erased, as much as possible, from public commemoration. Franco’s statues will disappear and the names of streets and squares will be changed. It is unlikely that the law will bring agreement on Spain’s history. If anything, it is opening up old divisions and creating new ones. “What do we gain?” asks Manuel Fraga, a senator and former minister under Franco who took part in the transition to democracy. “Look at the British: Cromwell decapitated a king, but his statue still stands outside parliament. You cannot change the past.”"