SEVILLE Lourdes de Alarcón Farratell standing among the plastic boxes in the cemetery. Human bones, skulls and teeth can be seen in the boxes.
The bones were excavated from a mass grave found in Seville. They are the people who were executed in Spain by the dictator Francisco Franco during the reign.
The remains of 11-year-old Lourdes’ great-grandfather may also be here.
Lourdes knows that the time of the dictatorship still divides Spaniards.
– Some of my friends think that General Franco did good, but they don’t specify what it was. Me and my other friends think that Franco was a genocidal. He should not have led the country, says Lourdes de Alarcón Farratell.
Lourdes and her little sister Julia have been going with their parents since they were little at events to remember their relatives who disappeared in the chaos of the Spanish Civil War in 1936-1939.
Italy won the war Benito Mussolini and Germany Adolf Hitler’s Franco, who idolized fascism. The dictatorship lasted forty years.
Up until now, the opening of the mass graves of the victims has depended on human rights organizations and private individuals.
Now, for the first time, the Spanish state is paying for the entire process: opening the graves, investigating the identity of the victims and erecting the memorials. For the first time, the new law also allows criminal investigations and prosecutions. The state pays the expenses.
A political disagreement led to the delay
Many of the supporters of the right consider opening the graves a mistake. They think it rips open old wounds.
Current Social Democratic Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has considered the new historical memory law as the most important goal of his reign. The government has also banned the separate grave monuments of Franco’s supporters and the activities of the Franco Foundation with its ideals of fascism.
In terms of impunity and remembering the victims, Spanish legislation has clearly lagged behind other Spanish-speaking countries.
In Latin America, Argentina published the first truth commission report on the human rights crimes of the military dictatorship in 1984, two years after the end of the dictatorship (1976-1982).
In Chile, the first mass grave was opened just a few months after the end of the right-wing dictatorship (1973-1990). Chile quickly investigated the treatment of the abducted, disappeared and tortured in several truth commissions. Thousands of people guilty of executions have been sentenced.
The victims were buried without coffins and garbage was piled on top
The Seville mass grave is located in the middle of the city’s cemetery. The opened grave is surrounded by black protective fences, and outsiders cannot get there due to the research work and the risk of collapse.
Photographs of Franco’s executed and disappeared victims are attached to nearby trees.
There is also another mass grave hidden in the area, which is scheduled to be opened next year.
The Spaniards have been shocked by the inhumane treatment of the victims before death and also after death.
– Some of the victims were tied together with strings and barbed wire before they died. They have been pushed into the grave one on top of the other and how it hurts. Everyone is buried without coffins, says the forensic doctor leading the excavations Juan Manuel Quijo Mauri.
The cause of death is often a close-range shot to the head or mid-body. The victims also have traces of torture.
About a tenth of the victims are women. There are also minors in the group.
– The sad thing is that they were not given peace even after death. Hospital waste, amputated limbs, animals and city garbage were brought to the same grave, Quijo says.
Not all the remains found in the grave area are of the victims of the dictatorship. According to Quijo, distinguishing between the victims and the other deceased has been the researchers’ most important task.
The samples taken from the bones of the mass grave are being studied at the University of Granada. The samples are compared with the DNA samples of the descendants who disappeared in the persecutions. The information is stored in state archives. The state has opened websites through which families can search for victims and see where there are mass graves.
The research work is progressing slowly. According to Quijo, more resources would be needed for that.
Once kinship is confirmed, the bones are handed over to the families. They will decide whether to bury the victims in a family grave or to lay them in a memorial grave to be built in the Seville cemetery.
A family searches for a missing journalist
Mother of 11-year-old Lourdes Lourdes Farratell Castro says that during his childhood the events of the civil war were not talked about.
Farratell Castro’s grandfather was executed on the outskirts of Seville. Joaquin Farratell was a journalist, writer and leftist. Franco’s supporters picked him up from his home and drove him to a nearby village, where he was executed.
The tracks end there.
– My own father fell into poverty at that time, and the family drifted to beg for food on the streets of Seville. For my father, remembering the dictatorship was very traumatic, it was difficult for him to talk about it. My father was always afraid of the revenge of Franco’s supporters, Lourdes Farratell Castro describes.
Farratell Castro began to investigate the fate of his grandfather after reading in a newspaper about the opening of a mass grave in Seville. He got in touch with a historian who could tell about Joaquin Farratelli’s life and death.
– I have thought about where I will bury my grandfather if he is found in a mass grave. I want him to remain among his comrades in the memorial tomb being built in the cemetery. So he is not alone, says Farratell Castro.
11-year-old daughter Lourdes hopes that the knowledge of history will not disappear.
– If I have children, I will tell them about my great-grandfather and what was done to him. If they have their own children, I hope they will also tell, because everything that happened must be remembered, says Lourdes.