SPAIN:SPAIN'S CRUSADING examining magistrate Judge Baltasar Garzon is accustomed to hitting the headlines. Over the past decade he has conducted many high-profile cases in Spain such as the trials of Basque terrorists, corrupt officials and drug barons.
He even tried to put Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet on trial for murder and crimes against humanity.
Earlier this year Judge Garzon met the demands of families of victims who asked him to investigate the disappearance of tens of thousands of Spaniards during the 1936-39 Civil War and the 40 years of dictatorship that ensued.
He asked for records of the missing from local authorities, the church and human rights groups.
By last month Judge Garzon had received some 130,000 names of men and women missing from across the country for almost 70 years.
He has authorised the exhumation of 20 mass graves, including that of the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who was shot by nationalist militia in 1936 and thrown into an unmarked grave.
Many other grave sites are expected to be identified shortly.
Last week Judge Garzon began a new campaign when he brought a case for crimes against humanity against the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco and 34 of his generals.
It has outraged many Spaniards who, for more than 30 years, have preferred to bury their bloody past in favour of the peaceful transition to democracy.
The veteran conservative politician Manuel Fraga Iribarne, founder of the right-wing Popular Party and the only former Franco minister still alive today, is incandescent with rage, describing the idea as "madness like putting Napoleon on trial".
The case against Franco, though, also threatens to cause a rift in the ranks of the Spanish judiciary.
Javier Zaragoza, chief prosecutor of the national court and a close friend of Judge Garzon, has officially rejected the case accusing the judge of exceeding his powers and conducting a "general inquisition".
Not only is it beyond the limit of statutes after so many years, but crimes against humanity did not even exist in the penal code of the 1930s, he said.
In addition, he said, a case against a former head of state and his officials would have to be tried by the supreme court and not by the national court or a military tribunal.
More important though for Mr Zaragoza and many others is that all political crimes committed during those years were pardoned in a general amnesty of 1977.
Inaki Gabilondo, a Spanish radio and TV journalist, described the case as a betrayal of the transition from dictatorship to democracy.
He accused politicians of both sides of "cashing in" on the controversy.
"The spirit of the transition has become the last big business of Franquismo," he said yesterday on the TV channel Cuatro.
However the chances of Franco ever coming to trial seem somewhat remote.
He died in November 1975.