Spain’s Past Is Lost

“We have won the election,” Pedro Sánchez, the leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), told a jubilant crowd at his party’s headquarters on Sunday night. “The future has won and the past has lost.”

Much of the campaign leading up to Spain’s third national election in four years did indeed feel like an argument over the country’s history. Sánchez presented himself as a strong advocate for a clean break with the past: If he were reelected, he vowed, he would literally exhume General Francisco Franco, the fascist dictator who ruled the country until his death in 1975, from his resting place in a massive shrine to fascist martyrs.

This pledge set up a clear contrast with Spain’s major right-wing parties. The PSOE’s traditional rival,