Funding to identify the disappeared
Move will lead to the ‘investigation, exhumation and anthropological study of the victims’ of the Civil War and Franco’s repression
A TOTAL of €614,500 is being stumped up by the regional government this year to excavate unmarked graves and exhume victims who were summarily executed during the Spanish Civil War and the subsequent brutal repression by the Franco regime.
Councillor for justice Gabriela Bravo said the funding will be used to help identify people who are still buried in mass graves around the Valencia region.
Last week the regional government announced that they are setting up Civil War ‘truth commission’ which will be charged with drawing up a list of all the victims.
The Valencia institute for the historic memory, human rights and public freedoms will be based in Alicante.
Members will study, investigate and launch measures which are ‘in line with the recommendations of the United Nations referring to the right to the truth, justice, mending and memory’ for family members of victims of the Civil War and Franco’s repression.
The institute – which will be up and running in the coming weeks – will also investigate the ‘forced disappearance’ of children during the Civil War and the dictatorship up until 1978 when Spain became a democracy.
Sra Bravo said her department will put a public contract out to tender to exhume mass graves identified in Benissa, Monóver, Paterna, Godella and Castellón.
The private company selected will carry out all the tasks related to the ‘investigation, exhumation and anthropological study of the victims’.
The councillor explained that regional government officials will work hand in hand with the contractors.
Sra Bravo admitted that ‘it had taken longer than they had foreseen’ to reach this point because the justice department had to carry out a lot of preparatory work.
“We were starting from zero because the previous regional government did absolutely nothing over this,” she said.
Mass graves
A number of mass graves have been found around the Valencia region, which contain the bodies of victims of Franco’s repression.
The site in Paterna cemetery in Valencia province, where an excavation has already started, is estimated to contain 2,388 bodies. The victims there were shot and interred after the Civil War in the period between 1939 and 1956.
Family members have called for their loved ones to be given a proper grave and a ‘decent burial’.
Last week regional president Ximo Puig visited the site of a mass grave at the postCivil War concentration camp of Albatera, which is now in the municipality of San Isidro.
Although official records claimed there were 1,600 prisoners at the camp and none died, survivors claim there were up to 10 times that number and many deaths.
Estimates indicate that up to 30 people were shot but the most common causes of death were illness, dehydration and hunger.
Sr Puig noted that the Franco regime ‘imprisoned and obliged the inmates to carry out forced labour’.
The prisoners were residents who had fought for the Spanish government during the Civil War.