The Politics of Memory: Unearthing Mass Graves from the Spanish Civil War

by Harry Owens Wed Jan 13, 2010 17:24

Introduction
Dr Ermengol lectures in a Barcelona university and has 12 years experience in forensic archaeology, having lived in Nicaragua and is currently excavating the forgotten mass graves of Spanish republicans from the Civil War (1936-39) and the post-war repression. His account of the background of the work traced it to the rise of Memoria Historica which he dated from 2000-2007, a phase which came after Franco's construct of the previous nationalist and official version which was inculcated for 40 years (or for approximately two generations).

Political background
This activity began with the Catalan regional government plan to compensate victims of the Franco repression; when the authorities expected about 3,000 to apply they got some 30,000 applicants, mostly from ex-prisoners of the regime. The next stage was opened by a TV documentary which reported on how the repression had affected children, which had a viewing audience of one million out of a Catalan population of some 6 million. This was broadcast at a time of official silence on the subject, which showed the huge interest which had been building up on the subject. Next was the effect of the right wing Madrid (PP) government's resuming of the Francoist discourse in the 1990s.

And then came the first public exhuming of the forgotten grave sites, which he reckoned were in the year 2000, and other events followed these such as the 2004 concert organised by the council of Rivas Vaciamadrid, which brought top singers and actors on stage with veterans of the struggle, to celebrate the Republic and the memory of those who had fought for it.

This has brought about a situation where there are now two opposing views or debates on the Civil War, left versus right, mirroring the divisions on 1936-9, with, for example the Vatican's mass canonising/beatifications for the Catholic martyrs of the period. Both Catalan and Madrid governments have subsequently passed laws on Memoria Historica, and all these factors go towards constructing a new national memory for Spanish people today.

The earliest private exhumations had been halted in the aftermath of Colonel Tejero's attempted coup d'etat in 1981, however since then the exhumations of the disappeared from Argentina's Dirty War had taken place, and unlike in Spain, these were undertaken within an official legal structure.

There were the famous Spanish prosecutions under international law of members of Argentinian death squads and even the ex-dictator of Chile, Augusto Pinochet. These were based on the idea that one could take a prosecution in any country, based on conventions which since the mid 19th century onwards have set out standards for warfare, treatment of prisoners, etc. and Nuremburg of course made case law on prosecutions for breaches of human rights. But significantly, the key treaty legislation which would allow prosecution for breaches in Spain itself have not been passed by any Spanish government to date, hence the absence of an automatic legal procedure in Spain today.

However, the above international investigations and prosecutions promoted the branch of Forensic Archaeology, as did the post-Balkan war exhumations, and those in Rwanda, etc. All this has focused on the ending of the killers’ impunity, however it has required that one has to identify each skeleton, to show how each individual had been killed and so forth. It is very important that this process takes place within a statutory legal system, as far as human rights are concerned. However in Spain it is all happening years too late, and we are now losing the last potential witnesses through old age. Ermengol suggested that this is now the time for the socialisation of research, to try and obtain the different individual views of events before it is too late.

As Franco's postwar executions usually weren't in public, there is now a huge problem in locating the sites where the bodies lie, and geo-technical work must be undertaken prior to excavation, with a record to date of a high failure rate in locating sites successfully. A grave may have one body or ten, 100 or 1,000. Or even more, as in the case in Malaga where they were all civilian dead. All excavations are similar with say 10-20 staff working on site.

Methodology
The goals are to establish how each individual was killed, that each was a prisoner and not killed in combat; although much of this information is in the military archives, these still usually remain closed. So the researchers are looking for data which already exists, however they still have to try and build up this data on a case by case basis.

The first question usually asked is how many bodies are here? The archaeologists thus study the layout and remains, to establish the number of dead. Then each body is individually examined, one by one, Which was first into the grave (usually the one at the bottom) and which was the last buried? They then make a map overlay, using a different colour for each individual to see if they were all buried together or at different times.

DNA identification
The best method of identification is microhondrial DNA testing but this needs a female relation to provide a DNA sample. Personal objects, buttons, bits of shoes, clothing, glasses or brooch can often provide links. Other considerations such as bone fractures (what type, where, was it at or near the time of death?) and bullets (rifle or pistol, large or small calibre?), come into play. Where in the body were they shot? If in the lower abdomen, it meant a slow and painful death. The trajectory of the bullet is also significant, as in battle it's typically from the front, especially with head or chest wounds, but if it is in the back or the top of the head, it's almost definitely an execution.

A judicial process requires that it is shown that the site has not been interfered with, that the team alone have access to the source of the evidence thus showing it was a grave, that there was a body, that the deceased was executed and then a murder can legally be reported. Often the judge will seal the site, or may declare that the case is beyond legal time limits for criminal enquiry.

Effects of the research
The Spanish are opening up the whole matter of the eliminations, the cleansing by the Franco forces, which were common events in every town or village, for example the infamous Badajoz killings of 2-4,000 civilians, reported by the foreign press after its capture. Thus there is no doubt that there was a genocide in Spain, obvious today if we look at coup-instigator General Mola's secret instructions before the rising began and even looking at General Quiepo de Llano's radio speeches as psychological warfare (perhaps even better considered as examples of psychopathology of his and General Franco's war).

This process of Memoria Historica is changing Spain's views of the war: in pre-democratic times, the typical view was that there were 100 ‘red’ killings for every one killed by Franco's side. During the transition to democracy, it became 100 killed by the reds for every 50 killed by Franco, but now historians such as Paul Preston have demonstrated that for every 50 people killed by the Republicans, 200 were killed by the Nationalists by Franco. In Valencia for example, a city which remained in the Republican rear until the end, the previous estimate was of some 3,000 killed post-war by Franco, but that total has now risen to 26,000.

Comment
My own question to the speaker stressed that this is an issue of four generations: the first consists of those who actually experienced and perhaps fought the war; the next two are those who were educated in a rigidly controlled and policed military state and had to accept official versions of the past and then present society in order to live and function within it; and finally the grandchildren or great-grandchildren, who typically ally with the first generation, disturbing the peace of mind of the intermediate generations by insisting on discovering the truth about their family or community's history, before the last witnesses are gone forever. For many facing up to unpleasant truths in Spain today, it's a matter of which generation you were born into.

The degree to which the two middle generations can continue to maintain the effects of inculcated self-censorship was brought home to me listening to a granny telling us how she and her husband used be awakened by the sound of the trucks bringing the condemned for execution in the graveyard on that side of the city in the late 1940s, but when I remarked on this to her son who had been in the room, he denied immediately that his mother had mentioned anything on the subject. What was striking to me was that this was the second time this man, a successful professional in his forties, had been with his mother and I when she'd casually commented on a wartime similar experience.

Perhaps the other significant feature is the effect noticeable when that mental wall is breached, if, say, old republicans are present, telling of their struggle against dictatorship and the fascist powers and of their comrades who died beside them. Then one notices the pause, the change in tone, the catch in the voice for a second, as finally for maybe the first time in their lives, such a memory was is spoken of, out loud and in public.

My most vivid image of this other submerged reality breaking out in public was listening to the PSOE minister on the platform of speakers when in 1994 we had the unveiling of the huge plaque for the 5000 Republican dead in the battle of Jarama in the cemetery of Morata de Tajuna. The campaign had been long, at least four years, and had required the assistance of Irish foreign minister Dick Spring and ex-prime minister of the UK, Edward Heath before Spain's socialist government would accept the event. But now that they had, miracle of miracles, they had a cabinet member on the platform. And as she told us of how she'd watched Ireland's Peter O'Connor come off the plane on TV and kissed the ground of the Madrid he'd once defended in the trenches, her voice did change, the tone was no longer official, but that of a woman now trying to keep her verbal posture, her dignity on the platform, while her sense her hidden history was opened to us all, listening among the tombstones below.

After that, where the government had been forced to accept that we were all in a democratic EU, officially at least, and that even if they had wanted to ignore the Spanish dead, these were also Irish, British, French, the dead of the 53 nations whose volunteers came here to stop what was to become the next world war. From then on, the offer of citizenship to all surviving brigaders, to fulfil the promise of the Republic's Premier Negrin, went through the Cortes and the citizenship itself was allowed under the succeeding first Aznar government. This seemed to help move forward similar recognition for many others who had long been campaigning, with varying degrees of success, at local and national levels within Spain.

A vivid intervention by a Spanish woman married here challenged the whole tenor of Dr Ermengol's presentation. The woman became more emotional as she continued to speak: she had been traditionally educated under Franco and was disturbed by the revisionism she saw undermining his claims, the lack of recognition of the massacres by the reds, some of which affected her own family, and advised us to read and believe the accounts in Anthony Beevor's more recent book on the Civil War, which she felt supported her views. Dr Ermengol reassured her that he too was from a family of the wartime victors, but that he also had his own opinions. He was engaged in scientific research, and the facts were the facts, which was of little satisfaction to his questioner.

My impression was that, like many traditional Catholics here dealing with clerical sex abuse, one has to allow quite a bit of space, and not a little time, for people to come to terms with deeply disturbing data which appears to undermine the basis of their own moral standards and those of the home in which they may have been happily reared. If this woman continues to read, but a bit more widely, and bears in mind the excellent critique of Beevor's point of view by Dr Helen Graham, a more accomplished historian in that field, she may well find her views becoming not too different to those of Dr Ermengol.