Recovering memory in the Spanish Civil War

     " Let every pain be token,
      the lost years shall be found "......Tom Glaser,  The Whole Wide World  Around

The winning side in any war controls the story. Franco and the Falangists in Spain have tried to erase the memory of the Republic and replace it  with their own version of history: fallen Catholic martyrs, massacred priests , and the "Reds" ("los Rojos", spat out as a term of abuse) destroying Belchite. Franco's dictatorship continued to kill republican civilians  as enemies of the state, not only during 
 the war, but as late as the 1950's . A large number of mass graves in Spain remain unmarked.

Since Franco's death, there has been a growing movement to find these dead. Some of the archaeologists in the International  Brigades Archaeology Project, who organised the dig we participated in, have  been actively involved in uncovering this past. They told us of villages whose residents, for the first time in more than 60 years, could point out the places where people had been killed and buried. Some unmarked graves had become places of veneration, which were not ploughed, but might be marked by a cross cut into a tree. Although the Francoists may have built roads or houses over the mass graves, people continued to leave flowers on the site, or scatter the ashes of the newly dead to join those parents or brothers or uncles buried there.

When professors from the university came to gather testimonies, the village hall  would be filled with those anxious to take part; and the archaeologists would find five hundred lined up to give DNA samples. For the first time, people were able to speak about the events of seventy  years ago; and to speak  in front of  ten, or a hundred people,  was a political act which took some courage.  Francisco  showed us a letter from a Francoist asking for forgiveness for his involvement in the killings.  Photos taken during the exhumations reveal a man hiding behind a tree as the team worked, still afraid; and  villagers crowding around the excavation site, while the son of an executioner stands to one side, apart from the others.

Those who had lost loved ones improvised mourning rituals during the opening of the mass graves  They might sing or read from the bible. When the bodies were removed and the grave stood empty, it gave the archaeologists an eerie feeling, as if the story was about to be repeated-  the people shot and tossed in again. In one photo, relatives had volunteered  to lie in the grave in the same position as the skeletons,  to reconstruct how they had fallen.

Primo Levi, a concentration camp survivor, said: "If understanding is possible, remembering is a duty".  One can sense in the team the passionate desire to be a part of this important reconstruction of historical memory.