During the Second Republic (1931-36), Spain was constituted as a secular parliamentary democracy. This political regime recognized the possibility of regions’ political autonomy, although it did not validate the declaration of independence of Catalonia, made the same day that the Republic was instituted (14^th April 1931). In this context, Catalonia, Galicia, and Basque Country enacted their Autonomy Statutes, although only Catalonia did it before the outbreak of the civil war in 1936.

A military rebellion against the Republic on the 18th of July 1936 caused the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, which would last for three years and end with the rebels’ victory and the consequent institution of a dictatorial regime led by the general Francisco Franco. Historians have widely described how the Franco regime practiced a systematic political repression of people with leftist ideology (pervasive use of military courts, extrajudicial punishments, mass killings, massive incarcerations, forced labor…): in fact, some scholars argue that the civil war continued up until 1952, in the form of an ‘irregular civil war’. Moreover, some experts qualify the Francoist repression with the international law’s notion of ‘genocide’, according to the United Nations 1948 Convention: in this case, the genocide would have been perpetrated against the internal political enemy of the Regime. Citizens with left-wing views (or those associated with them, or their relatives), were dehumanized, pathologized and attributed putative racial elements (being degenerate) by the Francoist authorities (and some psychiatrists, like the famous Vallejo Nágera), and were seen as a group to annihilate for the good of Spain.

With the enactment of the 1978 Constitution, Spain was constituted as a social and democratic ‘Estado de derecho’ (Rechtsstaat), adopting the form of a parliamentary monarchy. Juan de Borbón, designated by Franco as successor of the post of State Chief, was appointed as the king, as a symbol of the permanence and unity of the Spanish state. This constitution was enacted after the so-called ‘transition’ process, which, after a late-Francoism period of great working-class struggle and political conflicts, revolved around political agreements (the so-called agreements of Moncloa, Pactos de la Moncloa) and a legal interpretation found to allow a change of political regime departing from the Francoist fundamental laws. The constitutional process began after elections, which took place in June 1977. Spain joined the European Economic Community in 1986. A crucial legal framework of the post-1978 Spanish state is that of the 1977 (thus, pre-constitutional) Amnesty Law, which was supported by most democrats in Spain to the extent that it allowed the annulment of political sentences and imprisonments of the dictatorship (that is, excluding the so-called ‘common prisoners’, which had, obviously, been sentenced by a legal system without due guarantees; they protested against the law under the lemma ‘Amnesty for everyone’). However, the Law also excluded the possibility of prosecuting any war and dictatorship crimes of the period 1936-77, thus leading to the complete impunity of Francoism supporters at the eyes of the Spanish justice. This is something that has been very much debated in relation to many political and legal issues, since it affects the possibilities of reparation of victims. The legal validity of the 1977 Law has also been contested in relation to international law and the nature of the crimes in question (qualifiable as crimes against humanity, and thus, according to some, without term of statute of limitations).

With regards to its territorial organization, the post-1978 Spain can be labelled as a decentralized unitary country, with a unique configuration that jurists have named ‘State of the Autonomies’, composed of 17 ‘autonomous communities’ (comunidades autónomas) and 2 autonomous cities (Ceuta and Melilla). The 1978 constitution does not recognize Spanish region’s sovereignty, but rather only some political and administrative autonomy. The official terminology speaks instead of ‘states’, Spanish autonomous communities, however, have in many cases broader competences than German states, for instance.[6] This has led to many internal political conflicts and debates since the very early years of the 1978 Spanish parliamentary democracy, particularly with regards to the Basque country and Catalonia.

During the greatest part of the twentieth century, until the 1978 democratic constitution, Spain was a Catholic confessional state. The exception to this were the few years of the Second Republic (1931-36), when Spain was defined as a secular state, aiming to oust and substitute by new state-dependent institutions the Catholic dominance of cemeteries, education, and health institutions. After the Spanish civil war (1936-39), with the instatement of the Franco Regime, Catholicism was again the official religion of Spain. What is more, the collaboration of the Catholic Church was crucial to the permanence of the Franco regime until the late 1970s: amongst other things, its bond with the Church became one of the core elements of Franco’s Spain’s image before the international community after the end of WWII. Some historians refer to the importance of Catholicism in the dictatorship with the term National-Catholicism (nacionalcatolicismo). The Francoist ideology was also anti-Semitic, and the Franco regime instated a special jurisdiction for the prosecution of communism and Masonry, often referring to the latter in relation to Judaism (judeo-masónico). This religious climate, thus, had various consequences on the legal system, both at the organizational and symbolic level. In the latter sense, it is also remarkable that a crucifix presided over the judges’ bench in all courts during the twentieth century, and still does in some cases today, despite the fact that after 1978, Spain is constituted as a secular and religiously tolerant state.

Jurisdictions
During the Spanish civil war (1936-39) the administration of justice changed in both sides of the conflict. The Francoist justice, after the war, differed from the previous legal system in that the predominant jurisdiction was the military jurisdiction, as well as other, new, special jurisdictions, like those aimed specifically at prosecuting ideological dissidence (for instance, there was a court against communism and Masonry), or the special jurisdiction against those labeled as idle and malefactors (vagos y maleantes), by which people were subject to pre-criminal detention.

Moreover, during the war and the first decades of the Franco Regime, public servants—including forensic physicians, judges, and prosecutors, but also lawyers—were purged due to ideological reasons. Left-wing politicians and militants, labelled as ‘Red’, were the main targets of these purges. The functionaries who had held important positions in the Republican government or the Republican administration of justice were regarded as adherent to the Republican-Communist-Red ideology that the regime antagonized, for instance. In these purges, civil servants had to provide the purging authorities (normally, the elites in the relevant administrative sector) with their professional and political history, declaring their adhesion to the Francoist ‘liberation of Spain’. Crucially, they also had to offer references of politically trustworthy people.

In the transition to democracy public servants of the administration of justice were not purged. Some special jurisdictions of the Franco regime disappeared. Yet, still today, Spain has got a particular set of courts in which crimes of terrorism and other related crimes are investigated and judged, the National Court (Audiencia Nacional), which resulted from the Francoist Court of Public Order (Tribunal de Orden Público).

Criminal law
During the period 1930-2000, there were many changes in criminal law in Spain. With the Second Republic, the 1928 Penal Code of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship was abrogated, so that the 1870 Penal Code was in force again. In 1932, a new penal code was enacted. This code remained in force during the war and the first years of the Franco regime, but with many reforms in the Francoist side and regime, including, notably, the reinforcement of death penalty, which was abolished during the Second Republic. In 1944, a new, Francoist penal law was enacted. It was reformed substantially in 1973. With the 1978 constitutional and democratic framework, death penalty was abolished again, and there were multiple reforms and projects of new penal code. The new, democratic penal code was enacted in 1995.

Criminal procedure
In 1882 the Spanish Law of Criminal Procedure [Ley de Enjuiciamiento Criminal] was passed. According to this legal basis, the Spanish legal system in criminal matters was organized by the accusatory principle. This means that the investigation and the trial were carried out by different courts: the investigation was directed by an investigating judge [juez instructor], whereas trials were presided over by a judge or panel of judges. The accusation was essentially formulated by the prosecutor, who could also request new investigative practices in the intermediate phase of the process. In contrast to other legal systems, in Spain there could also be a private accusation (for instance, the victim) and a popular accusation (like a social group or political party).

The late nineteenth-century reform of the Spanish criminal procedure also led to the enforcement of the institution of the jury for some crimes. However, before the Second Republic, its practice was difficult, and it was only in force in the periods 1870-1875 and 1888-1923. With the Second Republic the jury was not only reinstated, but it was also crucially reformed. Firstly, women could be part of the jury in some cases, those that had to do with public morality or marital relationships, including murder and infanticide amongst others. Secondly, the verdict that the jury had to give in the Second Republic was a yes or no to a set of questions that the judges had written, and the parties had approved after having the opportunity to object to them or suggest modifications (for example: “Did Carlos strangle his wife?” “YES”. “Did María act in a state of temporary mental disorder?” “NO”), rather than a verdict of “guilty” or “not guilty”, as it had been the case before. Judges were no longer allowed to sum up the trial proceedings, as it was usual to do before the Republic, for this was considered to bias the verdict.

In the Francoist dictatorship, the jury was abolished. The 1882 Law of Criminal Procedure remained in force for the ordinary, criminal jurisdiction.

With the 1978 Constitution, Spain acquired a legal framework that allowed for the due process in criminal proceedings, in accordance with the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (signed by Spain in 1977) and the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights (signed in 1979). In 1995 the jury was reinstated for some crimes, and women are now part of the jury without any limitations.

The Spanish gender culture was highly shaped by the centrality of the institution of both the bourgeois and Catholic family. In this model, women were regarded primarily as legally minor, non-working, mothers with the duty to comply with the pater familia’s lead of the family and house. Their out-of-marriage sexuality was prosecuted as a crime and a sin, being the core element of their honour and their family’s honour. This was particularly the case with the  instatement of the Franco regime. In practice, however, many women worked, especially those of lower classes, and the early years of the Franco regime were also the gold time of female domestic service.

Looking at the issue of gender from a legal perspective, it is remarkable that during the Second Republic diverse legal initiatives were aimed at recognizing individual rights of women, in coherence with the 1931 Constitution, that recognised the equality of men and women (art. 25), and a civil law recognized women’s civil capacity. Women could vote for the first time in 1932 (after much political debate), and they could also be part of the jury in some cases. Divorce was legalised, and the crime of adultery was eliminated from the penal code. A clause that greatly reduced the penalty for some homicides committed by men on their wives and daughters due to honour reasons was also abrogated. The Francoist legislation reversed all these legal changes of the Republic, so that the civil citizenship of women was again minimalized. The official ideology of the Regime included sexist values closely related to Catholicism and the Fascist ideal of the family as the basic unit of the Nation. For instance, it was even considered a crime for a couple to live together if they were not legally and Catholically married (amancebamiento). Moreover, homosexual relationships were also criminalized and prosecuted by the criminal justice under the penal type of public scandal.

With the 1978 constitution, gender equality became a core value of the Spanish democracy. In practice, sexism was still ingrained culturally, socially, institutionally, and legally. For instance, murders and homicides in marital or affective relationships happened frequently and they were rarely punished by criminal justice. This led to the enforcement of a specific law and the creation of specialised courts since 2004. A triggering event for such legal change was the 1997 murder of a woman by her ex-husband after she had reported the maltreatment she had suffered from him for years in a TV program; days later, he burnt her alive. Afterwards, many people protested, demanding greater protection of women against domestic, gendered violence. The preface to the 2004 law explained that ‘In the Spanish reality, aggressions against women are especially prevalent.’ In 1985, the crime of abortion had also changed significantly, with a reform of the 1973 penal code that had decriminalized abortion under three circumstances: therapeutic (if the mother is at risk due to pregnancy), Eugenesic (if there is a risk of a severely disabling illness in the coming child), and ethic (in case of pregnancy as a result of rape). This reform was highly contested, but it has not overturned. On the contrary, in 2010 a new law introduced the additional decriminalization of all consented  abortions practiced by doctors in accredited clinics until the 14th week of pregnancy, although problems of access to this service remain. Some of the problems (for instance, the opposition of some head doctors to the practice of abortion in their clinical service, or the stigma that practicing them can imply for gynecologists) are partly related to the Spanish gender culture, in which many people still regard all abortions as crimes. This is also connected to the prevalence and power of Catholic religion in Spain.

Violent crimes were often reported in local journals, also in the Franco regime. However, in the first years of the regime (1939-1959) this was less frequent, probably due to Catholic, moral reasons and the existence of press censorship. Since 1952, the journal that was more centered in reporting blood crimes in detail was El Caso: Crónica de Sucesos, which was very popular until it closed in the 1990s.

Class had many effects on the Spanish forensic culture. It determined who could be a juror in the Second Republic, since property and income were one of the factors that capacitated citizens for such a role. Moreover, class also shaped, in general, who legal practitioners were in the Spanish forensic culture, since higher education, in practice, was out of reach of the working class during the period 1930-2000. During the Franco regime, moreover, marginalized groups (prostitutes, beggars, travelers…) were subject of pre-criminal detention by a special jurisdiction (which also prosecutor homosexuals), labeled as ‘idle’ (vagos) and criminalized for their mere existence and way of life.

Besides class, the main social divides that can be identified in 1930-2000 Spain are based on processes of racialization and migration. Roma people have suffered from a prevalent and longstanding oppression, that has shaped also legal proceedings by leading to practices of criminalization and undue procedural practices. Democratic, post-1978 Spain, as other European countries, also excludes many migrant people from legal citizenship, making pervasive use of centers for migrants, which function in practice like prisons, and deportation practices, which can also be decided as parts of criminal sentences that imply assessments of residents of Spain’s relation to the country (such assessments have eventually been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights).

Honour has been judged to be a central value in Spanish culture until the mid-twentieth century. This was not simply a top-down imposition: there was a  popular and longstanding culture of honour that further maintained a close social and moral scrutiny and punishment for women. Criminal proceedings of the 1940s and 1950s demonstrate that male honour differed from female honour (honra), but they were also interdependent. Individually, male honour became progressively equivalent to their social reputation, as well as closely related to the value of work and of being a good Catholic, whereas female honour continued to refer primarily the sexual behaviour of women, which had to be restricted to marriage and the objective of reproduction, in accordance with the Catholic doctrine and the Spanish gender culture. However, female honour had an impact on the male honour of her family members, and of the family as a whole. This is what shaped, for instance, the article of infanticide, that prevised a lowered penalty for new-born murder if it had been committed due to the compromised honour of the child’s mother. The lowered penalty was applicable both to the mother of the child and to her parents, due to the impact that a woman’s honour had on her family.

One of the main changes in the Spanish criminal law of the period 1930-2000 in Spain affected sexual crimes. This change was introduced in 1989, as part of the many reforms of the 1944/1973 code of Franco regime (other reforms concerned, for example, abortion, and many subjects of new penal code were published and debated). In terms of criminal policy, the key change was that the interest that was considered damaged in sexual crimes was sexual freedom (libertad sexual), whereas before sexual crimes were regulated as crimes against honesty (delitos contra la honestidad). The previous legislation protected mostly women’s honour, which was a social good in the context of the patriarchal, Catholic family, whereas the new one focused on the protection of a human, individual right: sexual freedom.

Relatedly, the new legislation became gender neutral. Before 1989, there was unequal protection of male and female victims, which resulted, crucially, from the protection of women’s and young girls’ ‘virginity’. Rape (violación) was, like in many other countries, a crime that could only be committed against women or girls, whereas when the victim was a man or boy, it qualified as dishonest abuse (abuso deshonesto). In both rape and dishonest abuse, one of these three circumstances had to occur:

1) The perpetrator had used violence or intimidation to commit the crime.

2) The victim ‘lacked reason’ or was unconscious.

3) The victim was under the age of 12.

Yet, what distinguished rape from dishonest abuse was, crucially, the sexual act that had occurred: vaginal penetration qualified as rape, whereas anal buccal or anal penetration, as well as other sexual acts like touching, qualified as dishonest abuse. Besides the gender inequality that this implied, for this distinction consent was not relevant, what was coherent with the fact that the interest under protection was honesty, not sexual freedom. In the same vein, it is important to note that, although these nuances were not included in any law, Spanish legal doctrine and courts demanded that the victim had resisted notably (the mere expression of lack of consent was not enough), and they also denied the possibility that rape or abuse occurred in the context of a marriage, as well as it occurring to a person who worked as a prostitute.

With the enactment 1995 new penal code of democracy, the gender-neutral Spanish legislation of sexual assault was structured, basically, around two key factors: age and the presence or absence of violence or intimidation.  Regarding the age of the victim, since a separate crime of sexual assault and abuse of minors (under the age of sexual consent, which was first 13 but changed to 16 in 2015) was introduced, whereas the absence of consent (or its presence as tainted consent) became the common element behind sexual crimes against adults.

The use of violence is what distinguishes the crime of sexual aggression, in which the perpetrator uses violence or intimidation, from the crime of sexual abuse, in which the perpetrator does not necessarily acts violently, but the victim has not consented the sexual act (including, but not only, the cases in which the victim is unconscious) or the perpetrator has obtained the consent by using his or her clear position of superiority regarding the victim. The old term of rape (violación), now gender-neutral, refers since 1995 to one of the various aggravated variants of the crime of sexual aggression: that in which the sexual aggression consists of ‘carnal access’ (to penetrate with a penis or oblige the victim to penetrate the perpetrator with a penis) via the mouth, the vagina or the anus, or of the introduction of objects or other corporal parts (fingers, tongue…) in the vagina or the anus (not the mouth).

The element of violence has been highly debated in Spain in the last years, particularly after the high-profile case of gang rape known as the case of La Manada.[2] After the initial judgement, that convicted the perpetrators of the case of sexual abuse (that is, not sexual aggression with violence or intimidation, nor rape), many people (including many feminist groups) protested, arguing that the case should qualify as rape, given that the victim had been intimidated and penetrated. Various legal scholars criticized the lack of comprehension of legal terms and proceedings that such protests were based on, and many people also prevented against conducting parallel, media trials. The Supreme Court finally accepted t argument, as it was defended in court by the public prosecutor and the particular and popular accusations in the case.[4] Some of these vindications have inspired a very recent project of transversal legislation ‘on sexual liberty’s integral guarantee’, put forward by the Ministries of Equality and Justice and approved in July 2021 by the Spanish cabinet. Amongst other changes to the Penal Code, the project plans to melt the penal types of sexual aggression and sexual abuse in a single penal type, thus eliminating at the level of crime individualization the difference between sexual assault with or without violence or intimidation. In that way, consent becomes the definitory element of the unique crime of sexual aggression.

Before, besides rape and dishonest abuse, there was a separate penal figure, stuprum (estupro), that punished sexual intercourse with underage girls (not boys) from 12 to 16 years old in cases in which conditions 1-3 did not concur, but there were other circumstances which had conditioned the victim’s consent to sexual intercourse, mainly (but not only):

1. certain personal circumstances of the perpetrator resulted in a disbalance of power (because the perpetrator had a position of authority, either familial or public: functionaries, teachers, priests…)
2. the perpetrator had misled the victim (typically, with a false promise of marriage)

The old penal type of stuprum is not mentioned explicitly in the 1995 penal code, but some jurists still refer with such notion (or that of ‘fraudulent stuprum’) to the variant of sexual abuse prevised in the code for those who commit such crime by misleading a person (either girl or boy) between certain ages (initially, it was 12-16, since 1999, 13-16, and since 2015 it is 16-18, that is, between the age of consent and the acquisition of legal adulthood). In 2015, this penal type was also extended to apply to those cases in which the perpetrator intendedly profits from a position of trust, authority or influence on the 16-18 year-old victim.

In the Spanish criminal law, murder (asesinato) has been traditionally distinguished from manslaughter (homicidio), understood as the act or omission intendedly directed to killing a person, by the additional concurrence of one or more of these circumstances:

1. The perpetrator uses methods meant to assure the commission of the crime without the risk that could result from defensive acts of the victim (alevosía);
2. The perpetrator commits the crime to obtain an economic benefit;
3. The perpetrator commits the crime with flood, fire, poison, or explosive material;
4. Premeditation;
5. The perpetrator deliberately (and ‘inhumanly’) increments the suffering or the victim (ensañamiento).

In terms of penalty, this legal difference was crucial, since murder could be punished with death, whereas manslaughter did not—except from the period 1931-1936, under the Second Republic’s legislation, when death penalty was abolished after being reinstated during the war and remaining in force until 1978, during the Franco regime.

In the 1995, democracy’s penal code, the conditions for murder were reduced to three: assurance of the result (alevosía), economic benefit, and increment of the victim’s suffering. Premeditation was, thus, eliminated as a condition for the qualification of a homicide as murder.

Another important change that was introduced with the 1995 penal code was the explicit inclusion in the penal code of various kinds of imprudent homicide. Before that, there was a general penal type for reckless imprudence (imprudencia temeraria), in which were categorized those acts and omissions that would constitute a crime in the penal code if the perpetrator had malice. With the elimination of such general clause, the penal code improved its application of the principle of legality, since the cases of punishable imprudence are now set explicitly by the legislator, and a significant decriminalization of imprudent acts, which are only included in the penal code exceptionally (but are, of course, still subject to civil law regulations of negligence).

Moreover, before the full transformation of criminal law in 1995, the Spanish articles about homicides were were highly shaped by gender norms, the value of honour, and the importance of the (Catholic) institution of the family. Apart from manslaughter and murder, there was another penal type (later on, variant of manslaughter) called parricide, which referred, broadly, to intrafamilial manslaughter. Considering this as a separate crime, with an aggravated penalty, was a longstanding legal doctrine, in which Roman law had a great influence. In the Spanish penal codes before 1995 parricides were punished with greater severity than manslaughter, including death in those periods in which death penalty was legal. In 1983, already under the constitutional regime of 1978, the crime of parricide was restricted to immediate relatives, and, after several political and juridical debates, it was no longer included in the 1995 penal code.

Infanticide laws were exceptions to the parricide aggravation of penalty for intrafamilial homicides. Besides, since the 19th century until 1973 (except from the period of the Second Republic), there was another significant exception to this general aggravation of penalty that was set for intrafamilial manslaughters: in cases in which a husband found his wife committing adultery (which was also considered a crime) or his under-23-years-old daughter being ‘corrupted’, he would receive a clearly reduced and privileged punishment (banishment) if he killed either his wife, her lover, his daughter, or her ‘corrupter’. This legal privilege was not included in the penal code as a mitigating circumstance, but rather as a general clause in the title of crimes against people, which further testifies for its ad-hoc nature. This privileged clause can be embedded in what some authors call ‘honour crimes’, that is, those crimes that result from the cultural dependence of the pater familia’s honour on the behavior of his female relatives, apart from being a clear manifestation of the sexist nature of the Spanish culture, society, political regimes, and legal system. In the 1920s there was a debate about this privileged clause, which was excluded from the new 1932 penal code of the Second Republic. This clause was already abrogated at the end of the Franco regime, in 1973.

Murders and manslaughters committed by men on women in marital or affective relationships (independent of women’s adulterous acts), which some authors and legal systems call femicides, were very prevalent in Spain until well into the 1978 democracy. Moreover, by the end of the century it was of common knowledge that these crimes were not investigated properly, implied a great degree of secondary victimization, and often remained unpunished or only received reduced sentences. This led to the enforcement, in 2004, of a specific integral law that aimed at solving these problems and offering a better prevention and protection for maltreated women.

Cooperation to suicide was included as a crime in all Spanish penal codes. In the 1920s and 1930s, Spain witnessed a debate about this crime, both related to the contemporary eugenics movement, changes in the conceptualizations of mental illness and suicide, and the fact that, in the 1928 penal code, enforced during the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, a clause was added to the crime of cooperation to suicide allowing judges to attenuate the penalty depending on ‘the personal characteristics of the perpetrator, his motives and the circumstances of the deeds’ (art. 517).  In the 1932 penal code and in the Francoist ones, this clause disappeared. In 1995 the legislator reduced the penalty for those cases in which the perpetrator had acted due to the explicit petition of the victim suffering from a severe illness (either nearly fatal or causing great pain). After many expert and public debates, in March 2021, euthanasia was regulated as a clinical option, and thus the cases of application of euthanasia according to the law since its enforcement (June 2021) have been excluded from such article of the penal code (art. 143).

In the Spanish criminal law, honour was an important category throughout the twentieth century, as it was also in society. As it had been the case in the previous penal codes since 1848, in the 1932 (Second Republic) penal code, the article of infanticide granted a less severe penalty for women and maternal grandparents who killed a newly born child to conceal the dishonour that the birth implied for the mother of the baby. Typically, this applied only to cases in which the mother of the late child was single and regarded as honourable by the court. Cases concerning others involved in the killing of newborns and cases where the honour motive was not proven could qualify as manslaughter, murder, or parricide. The same benefit was conceded to women committing abortion and child abandonment. Familiar honour was a very important value of the Franco dictatorship. Although their penalty increased somewhat, the honour clauses for infanticide, abortion, and child abandonment remained in force during the dictatorship. These articles were finally abrogated in 1995, in the Penal Code of the Democracy, after many juridical and political debates.

Peris’ biography reflects the importance of psychiatry in the forensic culture of the Second Spanish Republic (1931-1936) and the effects of the Francoist regime on forensic experts. Before 1936, he practiced as a forensic physician and published in the Journal of Legal Medicine, Criminology and Forensic Psychiatry (1932). He also published literary works centered on crime and psychiatry, like El lobo en la trampa. He was purged from his position by Francoist authorities in 1941, and he was only allowed to practice again in 1950.

Aznar was a key promotor in the incorporation of forensic sciences to the practices of the Francoist police, and he has even been judged as ‘the founder of today’s Spanish Scientific Police’. He promoted the creation of the Service of Forensic Criminal Investigation of the Spanish police. He was also a professor in the Academy for the Civil Guard. In 1968 he obtained the chair of Legal Medicine at the University of Salamanca. Apart from writing expert reports for courts, he published several articles and books about topics in forensic science, like the analysis of hair and blood stains. He also had a particular interest in criminology and the effects of menstruation on crime.

Piga was one of the foremost figures in the institutional network around the discipline of Legal Medicine of the Francoist dictatorship. He had been a forensic physician and assistant in the chair of Legal Medicine (held by Tomás Maestre) in Madrid since 1916. He became chair himself in 1942, and he began directing the School of Legal Medicine. He directed the Journal of Legal Medicine (Revista de Medicina Legal), the official journal of the National Corps of Forensic Physicians, and he was part of the writing of the 1946 Law of the Corps.

Castellano in 1978, and to gain the post of chair professor of Medicine in Spain, in 1980. More concretely, and she obtained the chair of Legal Medicine at the University of Zaragoza. Before that, she also practiced as a forensic physician (which she continued to do after becoming chair professor) and she had also been a research visitor at the Institute of Legal Medicine in Liège (Belgium) with prof. Armand André, where she learnt about techniques of investigation of paternity, which back then were still not allowed in Spain (during the transition to democracy, 1978-79). Castellano was pioneer in conducting research about violence against women in Spain. After 1980, she has held many positions in Spanish universities and institutions (since 1996, she holds the chair of Legal Medicine at the University of Granada), and she has also been the secretary of the Internacional Academy of Legal Medecine.