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WORLD NEWS Wednesday 29 august 2018

In Spain, renewed efforts to appease victims of dictatorship

By ARITZ PARRA association of 42 relatives
PATERNA, Spain (AP) — Re- who pushed for the open-
medios Ferrer scrutinizes a ing of graveyard number
pit where forensic archae- 112, ultimately paid for by
ologists are brushing away a grant last year from the
dusty soil and white traces provincial government of
of quicklime, unearthing Valencia.
four fractured skulls amid a On Tuesday, armed with
mass of bones and decay- the evidence of remains
ing clothes. showing cracked bones
Her anarchist grandfather, suggesting torture or vio-
Mariano Brines, was sum- lent deaths, Gomez and
marily executed by a firing Calpe's team of archae-
squad in Paterna months ologists showed up in Pa-
after Gen. Francisco Fran- terna's local courthouse to
co proclaimed his victory request authorities to open
in the 1936-39 Spanish Civil a criminal investigation.
War. According to the fam- The group explained that
ily's account, Brines was judges tend to dismiss the
buried along with 99 other cases because crimes over
sympathizers of the fallen 20 years old fall under a
republican regime just as 1977 amnesty law that was
the dictatorship cemented key in ensuring the coun-
its authoritarian grip. try's peaceful transition to
Eight decades on, a new democracy, by protect-
center-left government's ing officials and members
move to exhume Franco Floral wreaths are placed at a wall called "El Paredon" where people were allegedly executed of Franco's security forces
by General Franco's regime closed to the cemetery of Paterna, near Valencia, Spain, Tuesday,
from a controversial shrine Aug. 28, 2018. from future prosecution.
also raised attention over Associated Press Gomez says the amnesty
an unresolved issue linked law should be changed,
to his regime — the hun- and before her for my in the quicklime to seal off War — in which half a mil- or scrapped altogether,
dreds of anonymous mass grandmother, to know that the site. lion people are believed because it deprives their
graves that testify to the grandpa was buried here On Tuesday, graveyard to have died on all sides deceased relatives from
dictatorship's brutality. like an animal," said Ferrer, number 112 — where two — and the four decades of justice. But the government
Such efforts, legally active now 66. "They should be the batches of 50 prisoners Francoism that followed. has not shown any signs of
at least for the past de- ones standing here." were inhumed months af- Exhumation efforts began wanting to revisit Franco-
cade, have been erratic, Paterna is a town in the ter the war ended in April in earnest in 2007 with a era judicial decisions in its
intermittent and led by vic- outskirts of coastal Valen- 1939 — was the latest to new Historic Memory Law efforts to amend the 2007
tims' descendants forced cia that has prospered in be opened in Paterna. Af- that condemned atrocities Historic Memory Law.
to seek independent, non- the shadow of an infamous ter days of careful digging committed during Franco's "I'm not looking for punish-
state funding, which has execution wall still standing underneath a layer of ordi- regime, which lasted until ment for anybody, but we
raised criticism from United near the cemetery, holes nary, casket-burials, piles of 1975. But the law fell short, don't want our relatives to
Nations bodies and human of bullets still visible among skeletons emerged. leaving it up to local and remain criminals in the eyes
rights organizations. flower bouquets and me- Alex Calpe, one of the in- regional governments to of history," Gomez said.
But for descendants of morials that locals place dependent archaeologists fund exhumations and For Ferrer, the exiled rela-
victims like Ferrer, whose to remember the atrocities working at the site on be- DNA tests — which were tive, the unearthing of
parents led her to French committed at the site. half of relatives those killed, often paid for by relatives the grave where Brines is
exile as a 2-year-old and Military and civil guard fir- says the experts' work must through crowd-funding. thought to be unleashed
died before discovering ing squads shot dead at be "thorough" because its The previous conservative a tidal wave of hope and
Brines' burial site, even the least 2,238 prisoners here goal is "to deliver closure to administration declined to sadness. But she said it was
changes sought by Spain's according to historians' re- the victims' families." allocate any budget. a necessary step.
new Socialist government search and the cemetery's Countrywide, the task "This is not a matter of poli- "This country can't remain
are coming too late. records. The remains are ahead remains daunting. tics, whether left or right- with such shame and dark-
"It makes me sad and an- believed to have been Mass graves are believed wing this is something that ness covered by layers of
gry, because it was heart- thrown into 70 different to hold at least 114,000 should be done," said Car- soil," she said. "This country
breaking for my mom, mass graves and covered victims of the Spanish Civil men Gomez, who leads the deserves real sunlight."q