Healing the wounds of the Spanish Civil War
Another mass grave containing bodies of Franco’s victims is being dug up
WORKS are continuing apace to excavate mass graves at Paterna cemetery in Valencia province.
Archaeologists are currently concentrating on an area known as common grave 115 (Fosa 115).
To date they have found the skeletons of 10 people who were shot by Franco’s fascists, but they calculate that there could be more than 150 victims in this part of the cemetery.
Director of the Arqueoantro scientific organisation, Miguel Mezquida explained that they started excavating this mass grave at the start of the month.
He explained that it is painstaking work and they expect to finish in the middle of July.
Sr Mezquida said the first two victims had been found in ‘boxes’ and the other eight had been thrown underneath.
He noted that relatives of the two people who had had ‘proper burials’ had been present when they were shot at the cemetery.
They had tried to ‘dignify’ their loved ones by burying them in make-shift coffins.
He added that they were still part of the tragedy of being in a mass grave.
At the moment they have reached a depth of three metres but will have to dig down to at least seven metres to extract all the victims.
Common grave 115 is expected to be the largest such site excavated in the Valencia region to date.
He noted that to help with identification it is essential to have DNA samples from relatives of people who think their loved ones may be in the mass grave.
The archaeologist called for people to come forward because ‘a lot of families are not involved in the process and are not members of the associations’.
He lamented that up to half the bodies may not be claimed after they are removed because ‘there is no one there to do so’.
However, the Valencia institute of memory will retain the DNA of the victims.
“If family members appear in one, five or 10 years then they can check their DNA with the samples that we have on file,” stated Sr Mezquida.
He added that the skeletons will have to be preserved, ‘ideally in a mausoleum’ so that they do not degrade further.
Summary executions
Sr Mezquida reminded that 400 victims have been excavated from mass graves at Paterna cemetery in the last three years.
President of the Fosa 115 association, Aurora Mañez said the discovery of the remains of their loved ones will ‘heal an open wound’ for many families.
She noted that ‘80 years in a long time, but we have only been a democracy for 40 years’.
However, this is something that should have been done a long time ago but successive governments failed to take the bull by the horns.
Sra Mañez is hoping to find the remains of her grandfather and bury him in her home town of Buñol, ‘a place he should never have been taken from in the first place’.
Most of the victims in Paterna were summarily executed by Franco’s troops and supporters after the Civil War had ended on April 1, 1939.
The shootings were classed as acts of ‘reprisal’, but many of those killed without trial were merely guilty of being on the losing side in the Civil War.
The ‘cleansing’ of anyone in Spain who was against Franco’s Catholic vision of the country continued into the 1940s.
The victims were often buried in mass graves, such as those which are being excavated in Paterna.