Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T04:21:31.487Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Mass Graves from the Civil War and the Franco Era in Spain: Once Forgotten, Now at the Heart of the Public Debate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2013

Josep Gelonch-Solé
Josep Gelonch-Solé*
Affiliation:
Cañada Blanch Centre, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK. E-mail: jgelonch@historia.udl.cat
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Since October 2000, mass graves from the Civil War and Franco's dictatorship have become the most visible issue of the process of recovery of historical memory in Spain, as a metaphor for digging up the traumatic past. This paper offers a historical reading of this process, pointing out the importance of recovering the buried bodies to give them a worthy burial, to restore their memory, and to allow families to complete their mourning. Mass graves have been the subject of different interventions: they have been located, marked and dignified, in some cases opened and the human remains exhumed. The graves, previously symbols of silence and oblivion are now sites of mourning and memory. In addition, many forgotten memories have been recovered. The victims of the war and the dictatorship have returned to the heart of the public debate, although not without controversy.

Type
Focus: Regimes of Memory
Information
European Review , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , October 2013 , pp. 507 - 522
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References and Notes

1.Barahona, P. A. and González, C. (2001) Introduction. In: P. A. Barahona and C. González (eds), The Politics of Memory: Transitional Justice in Democratizing Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 1–39.Google Scholar
2.Aguilar, P. (2008) Políticas de la memoria y memorias de la política (Madrid: Alianza Editorial).Google Scholar
3. J. Elster (2006) Rendición de cuentas. La justicia transicional en perspectiva histórica (Buenos Aires: Katz), pp. 80–81. Vinyes, R. (2009) La memoria del Estado. In: R. Vinyes (ed.), El Estado y la memoria. Gobiernos y ciudadanos frente a los traumas de la historia (Barcelona: RBA), pp. 23–66.Google Scholar
4. A. Robben (2000) State terror in the Netherworld: disappearance and reburial in Argentina. In: J. A. Sluka (ed.), Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press), pp. 91–113; Robben, A. (2005) Political Violence and Trauma in Argentina (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5.De Baets, A. (2009) Responsible History (New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books), c. 4 ‘Duties of the Living to the Dead’.Google Scholar
6. There are documented examples of the prohibition of mourning and the demolition of memorial markers in Finland, Korea, Argentina, etc. U.-M. Peltonen (2002) Civil War victims and the ways of mourning in Finland in 1918. In: K. Christie and R. Cribb (eds), Historical Injustice and Democratic Transition in Eastern Asia and Northern Europe. Ghost at the Table of Democracy (London: Routledge Curzon), pp. 184–197; H. Kwon (2008) The Korean War mass graves. The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 1 August 2008; Robben, A. (2000) State terror in the Netherworld: disappearance and reburial in Argentina. In: J. A. Sluka (ed.), Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press), pp. 91–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7. H. Kwon (2009) Healing the Wounds of War: New Ancestral Shrines in Korea. The Asia-Pacific Journal, 24 April 2009; and Kwon, H. (2006) After the Massacre. Commemoration and consolation in Ha My and My Lai (Berkeley: University of California Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8.Verdery, K. (1999) The Political Lives of Dead Bodies. Reburial and Postsocialist Change (New York: Columbia University Press).Google Scholar
9.Solé, Q. (2008) Els morts clandestins. Les fosses comunes de la Guerra Civil a Catalunya (1936–1939) (Catarroja-Barcelona: Afers). This book is useful in analysing the wide variety of existing types of graves in Spain.Google Scholar
10.Preston, P. (2012) The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain (London: Harper Press).Google Scholar
11.Ledesma, J. L. (2005) La ‘santa ira popular’ del 36. La violencia en guerra civil y revolución, entre cultura y política. In: J. Muñoz Soro, J. L. Ledesma and J. Rodrigo (Coords.) Culturas y políticas de la violencia. España siglo XX (Madrid: Siete Mares), pp. 147–192.Google Scholar
12.Rodrigo, J. (2008) Hasta la raíz. Violencia durante la guerra civil y la dictadura franquista (Madrid: Alianza).Google Scholar
13. Along with Paul Preston's book here quoted, Espinosa, F. (ed.) (2010) Violencia roja y azul: España, 1936–1950 (Barcelona: Crítica) is the most up-to-date source of data on this.Google Scholar
14. Among other studies that confirm this profoundly class-based nature of Franco-era repression, see S. Vega (2005) De la esperanza a la persecución. La represión franquista en la provincia de Segovia (Barcelona: Crítica) or Gil, C. (2006) La Guerra Civil en la Rioja Alta (Barcelona: Crítica).Google Scholar
15. For more information on the Castuera concentration camp, see the collection of contributions in Revista de Estudios Extremeños, LXVII(2), mayo-agosto 2011.Google Scholar
16.Box, Z. (2010) España, año cero. La construcción simbólica del franquismo (Madrid: Alianza).Google Scholar
17. Orden de 1 de mayo de 1940, Boletín Oficial del Estado (BOE), 1 April 1940.Google Scholar
18. K. Hite (2008) The Valley of the Fallen: tales from the crypt. Forum for Modern Language Studies, 44(2), pp. 110–127; Q. Solé (2009) Inhumados en el Valle de los Caídos. Los primeros traslados desde la provincia de Madrid. HISPANIA NOVA. Revista de Historia Contemporánea, 9; Ferrándiz, F. (2011) Guerras sin fin: guía para descifrar el Valle de los Caídos en la España contemporánea. Política y Sociedad, 48(3), pp. 481–500.Google Scholar
19. In the first years after the war, mothers and widows would walk from the neighbouring villages to spend the day in La Barranca. In 1979, the graves there were fenced in and tidied up, turning it into a civil cemetery. Moral, A. (1984) Un cementerio sobre la fosa común de los fusilados en 1936 en Logroño. El País, 2 November 1984.Google Scholar
20.Sánchez León, P. (2012) Overcoming the violent past in Spain, 1939–2009. European Review, 20, pp. 492–504 describes the two regimes of memory established relating to the Spanish Civil War, one of ‘total victory’ and the other ‘mistakes and collective responsibility’, as well as a third discourse that has recently emerged, that of ‘institutionalised memory’.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21. C. Humbleblaek (2011) The ‘Pacto de Olvido’. In: G. Alonso and D. Muro (eds), The Politics and Memory of Democratic Transition (London: Routledge/Cañada Blanch Centre), pp. 183–198. Rada, J. (2008) La primera fosa en exhumar justicia. Público, 22 September 2008.Google Scholar
22.C. Mir (2010) Dignifying the mass graves of the repression in Catalonia (Ponencia, London School of Economics) [http://www2.lse.ac.uk/europeanInstitute/research/catalanObservatory/documents/pdf/Memorial/Conxita%20Mir.pdf]. After years of legal struggle, a family has recently obtained the necessary municipal permits to begin the work to find their relative who had been buried in the mass grave of Paterna cemetery. Levante, 17 September 2012.Google Scholar
23.Encarnación, O. (2001) Civil society and the consolidation of democracy in Spain. Political Science Quarterly, 116(1), pp. 53–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
24. The condemnation by the Constitutional Commission of the Congress of Deputies of the July 1936 coup d’état and the moral recognition of all the victims of Franco-era repression occurred on 20 November 2002 (Boletín Oficial de las Cortes Generales, 448, 29 November 2002); ‘Ley por la que se reconocen y amplían derechos y se establecen medidas en favor de quienes padecieron persecución o violencia durante la guerra civil y la dictadura’, Ley 52/2007, de 26 de diciembre, BOE, n. 310.Google Scholar
25. In Catalonia, there was an institution set up tasked with fleshing out policies of remembrance, the Memorial Democràtic, established by law in October 2007. Guixé, J. (2008) El Memorial Democrático y los lugares de la memoria: la recuperación del patrimonio memorial en Cataluña. Entelequia, 7, pp. 217–228.Google Scholar
26.F. Ferrándiz (2011) Autopsia social de un destierro. ISEGORÍA. Revista de Filosofía Moral y Política, 45, pp. 525–544, pp. 536-537. In Catalonia a specific Graves Law was drawn up and approved, which called for the finding and identification of people who had disappeared during the Civil War and the Franco era, as well as for the graves to be dignified and, in certain cases, for the recovery of the bodies. (Ley 10/2009, de 30 de junio, Diari Oficial de la Generalitat de Catalunya, núm. 5417, 9 July 2009). A protocol for the excavation, exhumation and the dignifying of the graves was subsequently established. (DOGC, no. 5784, 28 December 2010).Google Scholar
27. The government of the Basque Country set up a commission in 2002 to find, identify and eventually exhume those who had disappeared during the war. In 2003, the Catalan government established the Unit for Disappeared Persons.Google Scholar
28. ‘La apertura de fosas del franquismo resiste a la crisis y al desdén judicial’. El Periódico de Catalunya, 4 August 2012. For a complete list of those exhumations carried out between 2000 and the end of 2011, see: http://politicasdelamemoria.org/images/stories/documentos/LISTADO_EXHUMACIONES_diciembre_11.pdfGoogle Scholar
29.In addition to the financial aid of the state in 2006 and that provided by the Law of Historical Memory (2007), one must also include the funds from the autonomous regions, including the Junta of Andalusia (2004) and the Memorial Democràtic de Cataluña (2007).Google Scholar
30.Sagués, J., Mir, C. and Barrull, J. (2012) Ciutadania, espai urbà i memòria a la Lleida del segle XX (Lleida: Ateneu Popular de Ponent/Pagès Editors).Google Scholar
31. Since the end of the 1990s, a revival of some of the Francoist myths about the Spanish Civil War has occurred, in what has been called ‘historical revisionism’.Google Scholar
32. Between July and September 2006 a number of death notices were published in the Spanish press in memory of victims of both republican and nationalist acts of repression that had occurred 70 years earlier. Fernández De Mata, I. (2009) In memoriam… esquelas, contra-esquelas y duelos inconclusos de la Guerra Civil española. Historia, Antropología y Fuentes Orales, 42, pp. 93–127.Google Scholar
33.Ferrándiz, F. (2011) Autopsia social de un destierro. ISEGORIA. Revista de Filosofia Moral y Polìtica, 45, pp. 525–544, pp. 536–537.Google Scholar
34.Ferrándiz, F. (2010) The Intimacy of defeat: exhumations in contemporary Spain. In: C. Jerez-Farrán and S. Amago (eds), Unearthing Franco's Legacy. Mass Graves and the Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press), pp. 304–325.Google Scholar
35.Renshaw, L. (2011) Exhuming Loss. Memory, Materiality and Mass Graves of the Spanish Civil War (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press).Google Scholar
36.Junquera, N. (2012) Víctimas del franquismo denuncian a España ante la Comisión Europea. El País 10 December 2012.Google Scholar