From digging up bones with bare hands to take political action: a comparative analysis of mass grave exhumations during Francoism, the Transition, and 21st c. Democrac

Abstract

The exhumation of mass graves in today’s Spain is not a recent event. During the Franco dictatorship, the regime recovered the bodies of their war dead, martyred victims and fallen soldiers for God and Country, and buried them with honor and distinction. But the families of murdered Republicans were not even allowed to reclaim their loved ones’ remains. The battered bodies were abandoned in unmarked mass graves without ceremony; families were not allowed to perform public acts of grief. This article is an ethnographic study of the exhumations of these victims of the 1936 military uprising in the province of Cádiz; it presents a comparative analysis of the evolution of this process during the Franco years, the Transition, and 21^st c. democracy, in terms of social and political factors.  For each of the three time periods, the author provides two representative case studies that highlight demands to recover and honor the memory of the dead. This struggle has its origins during the Franco dictatorship but continues today as unfinished business.