Exhumation of civil war victims begins from Spain’s biggest mass grave

More than eight decades after Spain’s civil war ended, the exhumation of dozens of casualties of the conflict who were buried in the country’s largest mass grave has begun.

The Valley of the Fallen mausoleum was built by the fascist dictator Francisco Franco in the mountains north of Madrid as a monument to his victory in the 1936-39 war.

Following its completion in 1958, the bodies of 34,000 victims from both sides of the conflict were buried in unmarked boxes in crypts on the site after being transferred from their original burial sites.

The families of some of these victims have been campaigning for the remains of their relatives to be exhumed in order to be given proper burials.

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On Monday, a team of experts including forensic scientists, archaeologists and police scientists entered the site in order to begin the process of identifying the remains of 128 of those buried inside before exhuming them.

This has been made possible by the Democratic Memory Law, approved by the Spanish parliament last year, with which the left-wing government of Pedro Sánchez sought to tackle the legacy of the civil war and the four-decade dictatorship that followed it. The legislation includes support for the exhumation of those buried in unmarked graves.

The Valley of the Fallen, which has a 150-metre-tall stone cross set above a basilica drilled into the side of a mountain, is the largest and most controversial reminder of the dictatorship. Built by republican prisoners who had fought against Franco, he was buried in its basilica in 1975.

In 2019, in an effort to ensure it was no longer seen as a site that glorified Franco, the government exhumed his remains and they were reburied in a cemetery. In April of this year, the remains of the far-right leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera, who was killed at the start of the civil war, were also transferred from the site.

Although it is managed by a community of Benedictine monks, it is due to be converted into a civic cemetery and it has been renamed the Valley of Cuelgamuros.

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The exhumation of the civil war victims from the site dates back to 2016, when a court ruled that two republican brothers, Manuel and Antonio Ramiro Lapena, could be exhumed. The Benedictine prior at the site refused to co-operate, however, delaying the process.

The exhumations have also been plagued by legal hurdles. Most recently, Carlota López Esteban, the conservative mayor of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, where the mausoleum is located, refused to grant the licence needed for the procedure. Far-right groups also attempted to block the exhumations, with the Supreme Court eventually intervening to allow them to go ahead.

Last week, the Lapena family was among a group of relatives who wrote to the Spanish Ombudsman to protest at how long the process was taking. They complained about “a complete lack of acknowledgment of or focus on those who seek to recover their forgotten [loved ones]”.

Now, however, with the scientific team having entered the site, it appears that the wait is over.

“We are optimistic because it seems that the work has started,” Eduardo Ranz, a lawyer for the families of nine of the victims, including the Lapena brothers, told The Irish Times. “This is a day of hope.”

The identification and exhumation process is expected to take weeks or possibly months. With a general election in late July, it is possible that a new government could take office before its completion. The main opposition Popular Party, which is ahead in polls, has said it plans to roll back the democratic memory law, arguing that the legislation needlessly digs up the past.