Marcos Ana does not remember everything about his 23 years in prison during Franco’s dictatorship.

Marcos Ana was jailed for 23 years during Franco’s rule.
But the 87-year-old poet remembers the electric shocks and brutal whippings that left his body covered in sores; the hunger that compelled him to eat grass sprouting between the stones of the prison patio; his crumpled mother, clinging to the shins of a prison guard, begging mercy for her bloodied and beaten son.

He remembers reading by moonlight the verses of Pablo Neruda, the left-wing Chilean poet, smuggled on single pages to his solitary cell, and memorizing his own compositions until he could scrounge a scrap of paper on which to write them.

Forty-six years after Mr. Ana was released from prison, he says he believes the time is ripe for Spain to commemorate and offer justice to the thousands who suffered during the country’s cruel 1936-39 civil war and the four decades of right-wing dictatorship that followed.

“We’re not looking to blame anyone, but we want to be recognized,” said Mr. Ana, a sinewy man with a fixed gaze and a papery complexion. Last month he published his memoir, “Tell Me What a Tree Is Like,” which tells the story of how, as an 19-year-old leader of the Socialist Youth, he was arrested, tortured and later condemned to death.

Mr. Ana, who won international renown for the poems he wrote in prison, was spared two death sentences and was released from prison in 1961. “Amnesty is one thing, but amnesia is another,” he said.

Mr. Ana’s wish may be realized, at least partly, on Wednesday when Parliament debates a law aimed at honoring victims of the civil war and of Franco’s repressive rule. The “law of historical memory” would declare illegitimate the military tribunals that condemned people like Mr. Ana and would create state funds to finance the process of exhuming mass graves that contain thousands of victims from both sides.

It would ban public symbols that commemorate Franco and his allies and turn the Valley of the Fallen, a massive mausoleum where the former dictator is buried, into a monument to all the war dead.

The law is a flagship piece of legislation for the Socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, whose grandfather was shot to death by pro-Franco troops. But it has proved fiercely controversial in a country where people remain bitterly divided about whether to stir the bones of the past.

Spain’s remarkably smooth transition to democracy is often attributed to the fact that — amid the dread of fresh civil conflict — people on both sides of the political spectrum were prepared to close the door on the horrors of the civil war and the dictatorship that followed. There were no truth and reconciliation commissions or war-crimes trials, and many of Franco’s military and political allies remained in positions of power.

“We had the generosity to say, ‘O.K., let’s close that chapter,’” Mr. Ana said. “But 40 years later we’re still walking around cities with streets named after the caudillo,” he said, referring to Franco.

Many conservatives and some liberals who were closely involved in mapping the transition say that the law will open old wounds. Mariano Rajoy, leader of the conservative opposition Popular Party, said the law would bring “problems and divisions without helping anyone.” However, the Popular Party approved in parliamentary commission about one-third of the articles in the law, including those relating to reparations and the Valley of the Fallen.

In an editorial this month, El País, the liberal newspaper whose founders and senior staff members are closely identified with the transition, said many of the law’s objectives could be achieved through other means. The government did not need a law to assume responsibility for exhumations and order new compensation for victims, the newspaper said.

Diego López Garrido, the Socialist Party’s parliamentary spokesman, said the law did not break with the transition.

“This is all part of a slow process,” Mr. Garrido said in an interview. “The transition had a very specific purpose — democracy. And democracy is incompatible with the continued existence of symbols that celebrate a dictatorship.”

Supporters of the law say that it is intended to honor all civil war victims, including thousands killed by Republican militias fighting Franco’s forces, and argue that those who suffered at the hands of Republican fighters had 40 years of Franco’s rule to bury their dead properly, and commemorate them with plaques and statues.

While some members of the Roman Catholic Church have argued against the law, the Vatican on Sunday plans to beatify 498 priests and nuns killed by Republican militias. Thousands of members of the clergy, which largely supported Franco, were killed by Republican militias and supporters early in the war.

Some criticize the law for not going far enough. Mr. Ana, who was condemned to death twice by Franco’s courts — once for “aiding rebellion” in his role as a Socialist Youth leader and once for being a threat to the state because of his political activism in prison — said the law should annul the military trials rather than simply declare them illegitimate.

Mr. Ana, whose death sentences were commuted, said it was “almost a humiliation” after all he had suffered, to be given a piece of paper that said his trial was illegitimate. On the basis of that ruling, he could apply to the courts for compensation — a battle he was unlikely to undertake at his age.

Mr. Garrido said Parliament could not annul the judgments because that would take lawmakers “into the territory of judges.” Armed with a new law that rules their trials illegitimate, former political prisoners or relatives of those executed would be able to appeal to the courts for compensation, lawmakers said.

Historians and others involved in lobbying for reparations said the state would be exposed to a torrent of lawsuits seeking compensation that could run to billions of euros if it annulled the convictions.

Emilio Silva, leader of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, said the law was “light” and should have addressed issues like the fact that the civil war is often passed over in Spanish children’s history books. The law should also have ordered a census of those killed, he said.

“This law is a drop in the bucket compared to the enormous injustices it tries to address,” said Mr. Silva, who began the association, which helps exhume the unmarked graves of the dead, after he found and reburied the bones of his grandfather, who was executed by Franco’s troops.

For Mr. Ana, the law is not about settling old scores but about remembering suffering as a way to prevent Spain’s dark past from repeating itself. It is also a way to restore dignity to those who were denied it.

“We want to be able to visit the graves of the dead. To pray there if we are Catholics,” he said. “Maybe bring a bunch of flowers.”