Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, of the Popular Party, did not have a word of condemnation for the 1936 military coup of Francisco Franco on July 18, its 80th anniversary.

Madrid renounced a state commemorative event, but a mass for the dictator was said at Valencia Cathedral on the day.

At least Catalonia organised a concert to commemorate “all the war victims,” at which the representatives of the Autonomous Community took part.

Only the Popular Party (PP) found the remembrance inappropriate and sent no representative. All this stands for how today’s Spain deals with war and dictatorship.

Against this backdrop, the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH) was founded in Madrid in December 2000 by the sociologist Emilio Silva.

The occasion was the exhumation of 13 bodies of people shot by Falangists, members of the Franco party, in October 1936. Silva is the grandson of one of those murdered.

The ARMH now has regional groups in many cities, which see it as their task to remind society of the approximately one million people who died between 1936 and 1939.

It also calls for all streets and public squares bearing the names of Franco-fascists to be renamed. Since the citizens’ movement Ahora Madrid has governed the capital, corresponding plans have been developed and name-changes are fixed for 27 streets.

But not all cities have such plans, although a law adopted in 2007 by the social-democratic PSOE government obliges all Spanish municipalities to do this.

That’s not to mention the Valle de los Caidos (Valley of the Fallen) monument and basilica, where the mortal remains of Franco and the military dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera rest.

The gigantic mausoleum near Madrid was built by the forced labour of political prisoners on Franco’s orders.

The Church organises a kind of pilgrimage every year, which seems particularly cynical when hundreds of those buried there are corpses of republicans buried in mass graves — taken there after their assassination, to the greater glory of their hangman. For the survivors this is an impertinence which is ignored by the authorities.

On July 17 journalist Jon Lee Anderson pleaded in a column on eldiario.es to demolish the structure: “For me it is an insult to the human conscience that this monument still exists and is even protected by the state.”

The work of the association remains a volunteer affair, as in July in the City University of Madrid, where the battleships of the International Brigades were investigated by the media.

According to official data, there are 2,382 mass graves in Spain dating since 1936 — more than in any other country.

Since 2000, ARMH has opened about 350 of these graves and found the skeletal remains of more than 8,500 murdered.

Probably the largest mass grave in Europe is located in the cemetery of San Rafael in Malaga. According to estimates, 4,500 people were executed and buried.

The PP-run local authority has built a park over the site including a dog toilet over one of the places where bodies were dumped.

Similarly, in Granada, the ARMH had to place a memorial plaque in a cemetery, pointing out that there were 4,000 people buried there, four times. Each time, the city administration had the board removed.

Only recently has it become an official memorial site. The 2007 Act of Historical Memory allows for the financing of excavations.

Whether they take place, however, depends on which party is in government. When Rajoy became prime minister in 2011, he stopped the flow of money. But there are private supporters of such projects.

An important player is the Basque scientific society Aranzadi with its director, the forensician Francisco Etxeberria. Norwegian trade union EL og IT Forbundet offers support again and again. It has accumulated money for years to allow the opening up of mass graves in Spain, especially in the case of assassinated trade unionists.

The Spanish parliament has never adopted a resolution against Franco’s putsch or his dictatorship. ARMH founder Silva believes this is because the elite of those days still rules in Spain.

Above all, after the death of Franco, the Amnesty Law was passed in 1977 with the votes of socialists and communists. It pardons all the political crimes committed during the war and the Franco regime in the name of reconciliation. Since then, the Spanish judiciary has refrained from explaining the crimes of Francoism.

The Communist Party (PCE) does not agree with this interpretation of the Amnesty Law, however. It said in 2013: “The Amnesty Law refers only to political crimes. There is no talk of crimes against humanity.” These, however, were subject to “international agreements which have power beyond the Amnesty Law.”

They would therefore have to be investigated and brought to light. In 2008, jurist Baltasar Garzon set up an inquiry into the crimes. He wanted to determine the whereabouts of 114,000 political opponents of Franco and of 30,000 kidnapped children.

He did not get far, and the investigation was soon suspended. There is only one court anywhere in the world — in Argentina — that tries to bring light into the dark. Specifically, Judge Maria Servini. She has already heard hundreds of witnesses in Spain and even went to see those who were no longer able to travel. “People are still afraid to testify today,” she has said.

In July, the United Nations demanded the repeal of the Amnesty Law. The UN human rights committee said it was concerned that Spain would not investigate executions and the violent demise of thousands of people.

• Carmela Negrete is a journalist who lives and works in Berlin.