Rehabilitate the victims, prohibit the glorification of the dictatorship, open mass graves. Spain hopes with a new law to close the black page of the civil war (1936-1939) and the subsequent Franco regime (until 1975). In the coming years, the government wants to remove thousands of victims from anonymous mass graves and return their bodies to their families.
The dictatorial past is still visible and an open nerve in Spain. Today the last body is recovered from a mass grave near a wall behind the Guadalajara cemetery. For two weeks, volunteers have been digging a pit in which dead villagers were dumped at the time. A shattered skull with a gunshot wound to the head is clearly visible.
The bones are carefully placed in plastic bags for DNA research that starts next. A little further on, the earth is further sifted, looking for knots, teeth or fillings that may still be between the sand and the stones.
Search for relatives
From a distance Ángeles Ortega watches. Her great-uncle Romualdo is somewhere between 21 skeletons. “They were clearly targeted by Franco’s soldiers. For revenge. Because they were republican, unionists, opponents in the war. They picked them up. They were thrown into that pit like vermin.”
Watch the video of Ángeles Ortega here. She often visits the mass grave in the cemetery.
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