“Bringing out the Dead: Reflective Report” (Research Paper, January 2008)

“Cadáveres vivos somos
en el horizonte, lejos.”

(“We are living corpses
on the horizon, far.”)

Miguel Hernandez, “Cancionero y Romancero de Ausencias”. [1]

Over seventy years ago, the military uprising backed by conservative political forces and the Roman Catholic Church against the democratically elected government of the Spanish Second Republic escalated into a bloody Civil War. Effectively the first battle of the Second World War, the conflict would last three years (1936-1939), and lead to the death of an estimated 500,000 people while serving a long-lasting, devastating blow to the human, economic and political landscapes of the country: General Franco’s fascist dictatorship would span over four decades (1939-1975) defined by hunger, indiscriminate state violence and terror, killing thousands of Spaniards and sending many more to labour camps.

However, conversations about the innumerable crimes, summary executions, mass graves and concentration camps under Franco’s regime never took place after the death of the dictator and Spain’s transition to democracy. Instead, a legally institutionalized amnesia following the amnesty[2] to free the many political prisoners still in jail in 1977 would be used in favour of those who actively worked for the Franquismo (thus avoiding truth commissions and prosecution for their crimes) crippling any efforts by the families of the victims to seek reparations or locate the bodies of some of the thousands “disappeared” during and after the Civil War.

In November 2007, after fifteen months of heated debate, a “Law for the Recovery of the Historical Memory”[3] was finally submitted to the country’s Congress for ratification. Thirty years late, and for the first time, the Spanish Parliament has finally condemned the regime of General Franco and backed initiatives to uphold the memory of the victims of both the Civil War and the Francoist repression, including the exhumation of the common graves of over 50,000 people[4], most thought to be Republican. The exhumation of this buried legacy – both in its metaphorical and tangible sense - is the subject of this project, and indeed, that of my work as researcher and documentarian. This paper aims to examine different aspects of the passing of the “law of historical memory” in relation to the dramadoc script it has inspired: “Bringing out the dead”.

The plot outline of the accompanying script could have easily evolved from any of the following excerpts, selected from a vast source of news articles. BBC reports in July 2002:

“Spain has begun excavating the sites where the remains of Republican soldiers killed during the Spanish Civil War are thought to be buried.

Since last week, bones, skulls and even black espadrilles have been turned up in the village in Piedrafita de Babia, near the town of Leon, north-western Spain.

Some seven sites near Piedrafita are being excavated in search of about 50 people, whose relatives say were killed on the night of 5 November 1937.

The Republican soldiers had been persuaded to turn themselves in to General Franco's nationalist forces which had taken over northern Spain.”[5]

The excavation was directed by a team of Spanish archaeologists, anthropologists and forensics scientists from the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica or ARMH in Spanish)[6] The team had been working for two years using the testimonies and memories of relatives and survivors to locate, access and identify the unmarked mass grave.

According to the relatives, the location was discovered the morning after the killings, but fear stopped the families from speaking out at the time. However, the Association believes that, as the graves are opened, more relatives will come forward. Association spokesman Santiago Macias:

“They are still afraid. They’ve been unable to speak for 60 years and it’s an effort for them to break the silence. But they will.”[7]

One of the witnesses, Asuncion Alvarez, 87, whose brothers were buried on the site, became so worried over the years that their fate would be forgotten that she drew a map of the spot where they lay and gave it to her children. The excavations confirmed the map’s accuracy.

Spanish newspaper El Pais reports in September 2007 yet another example of the innumerable murders that occurred over the span of the war[8]: February 14^th 1937, Villanueva del Rosario (Malaga) Francisco Gonzalez and 10 fellow Republican sympathizers are offered amnesty and persuaded to turn themselves in to General Franco’s nationalist forces. As they surrender, the 11 men are summarily executed by the fascists’ firing squad and dumped into an open pit.

Francisco’s daughter, Ana Gonzalez, an 8-year old witness to the covering of the shallow grave where her father and the others had been buried, would remain silent for seventy years. A team of volunteers, psychologists and archaeologists is now helping her and other relatives of the victims locate and identify their remains. Relatives and neighbours from nearby villages get together by the grave to honor the memory of the victims for the first time.

November 2007. The Guardian reports:

“In early September, in the shadow of a Romanesque church in Porriño, a tiny town west of Vigo a team of forensic archaeologists, volunteers and psychologists worked diligently, brushing at the earth with their bare hands, with paintbrushes, with delicate instruments. A small crowd of locals gathered around them, fanning themselves in the heat, some standing a few feet away in the shade of the trees (...) The work crawled along meticulously; when a recognisable artifact emerged, the onlookers would gather, clucking and murmuring amongst themselves. A collective sigh went up as a skull emerged, shattered by a bullet hole; two bony feet still wore boots.

The skull and the feet belonged to men who were executed here by the Falange, supporters of Francisco Franco in the early days of the Spanish civil war. They were thrown in this unmarked grave purposefully placed at the foot of the church, explained Javier Ortiz, the head forensic archaeologist, "So everyone would walk on them, forever desecrating them".

Two elderly men stood looking over into the pit. One remembered hearing the screaming, the shots. The other was looking for his father.”[9]

In the course of my research these stories have come to represent more than just a dramatic device for an academic project (in my opinion, docudrama indulges in fiction and is therefore a genre I feel uncomfortable with) or an entry point to expose the history of violence of the Spanish Civil War. Their recurrent narrative of injustice, long repressed grief and institutionalized silence highlight the urgency to repair the dignity of people who have little time left to wait for the recognition they deserve, at a moment in time when historical truths may raise ghosts some would rather remained buried, but many of us feel is time to seriously debate to lay to rest. I travel to Spain to try to engage in that debate directly.

I discuss with my parents their inherited memories from the war (both of them were born during the conflict), what it was like to live with a divided past and how my grandparents’ left-leaning sympathies (and my parents’ own) came at a price. As if for the first time, my mother tells me once again how my grandmother’s boyfriend died on the Republican front in Jaen. An educated, liberal and well connected young woman, she found a way for him to avoid conscription by working as an admin officer. Lacking any typing skills, he was inevitably deployed to the front where he was killed. She bought me a typewriter when I was thirteen. My mother also tells me about my grandfather in Seville at the time the city fell to the Nacionales. A socialist on the wrong side of the conflict, he was forced to fight for the Franco cause to save the honour of his family, his mother given the “mercy” to spare one of her six children from the front. Married in a country now divided between the victors and the vanquished, both of my grandparents would survive by hiding their past as rojos (reds) even from their own children.

I learn about my father’s father, a communist sympathizer and a teacher during the Republic, spared from the conflict because of his age but banned from his job after the war, forced into manual labour to support a family of seven, the youngest children (my father and his sister) having to attend the so-called “Auxilio Social” (“Social Aid”), a welfare institution inspired by the nazi "Winterhilfe" and used to indoctrinate and proselytize the women and children of the defeated in the war. My father takes me to the exact location of the dining hall, now a private catholic school. A prominent fascist emblem (eagle, yoke and arrows) still hangs from the façade today. Immediately behind the building, he recalls, were the old headquarters of Falange[10], the thuggish shock-troops of the regime, and one of the main instruments of state terror which annihilated any dissidence in the new España Nacional. Dismissed memories in a country where reading history in schools is like getting a Reader’s Digest version of events[11]. Despite the importance of the Civil War, only 50% of Spaniards have talked about it at home. 35% say they were never taught what happened in 1936, at school[12].

I meet some of the people who are trying to protect these memories. Historian Marcial Sanchez Mosquera, from Fundacion de Estudios Sindicales, affiliated to the trade union Comisiones Obreras de Andalucia (http://www.andalucia.ccoo.es), has been coordinating an audiovisual memory archive project since 1991 aiming to record oral testimonies from the victims of the Francoist regime. I visit the Historical Archive of Comisiones in Seville to learn more about their project.

Marcial Sanchez Mosquera: We try to recover and preserve the memories of the protagonists. Memory, as a psychological process, can only exist as long as the person is alive. The memory of the events belongs to the people who experienced them… Once these people die, that memory, that singular perception of history in first person, will disappear. We try to document those memories. We concentrate on oral sources, interviewing direct witnesses of the events, mainly those who lived under the Franquismo and the transition to democracy, although some interviews may refer to other historical episodes. So far we have over 200 interviews in the archive.

Jose Velazquez: How does the team approach these interviews?

MSM: We obtain information from various sources: members of the trade union, contacts, research projects, bibliographical sources… The team is multidisciplinary. Most of us are historians; however, we also need the perspective of psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists…These skills are essential to approach our subjects. We are not dealing with political stories; we are dealing with human stories.

JV: How is the material currently being used?

MSM: The archive is open to researchers, and now also to documentarians. At the moment we are working on a film project about the deported of 1969 – in 1969 the regime declared a state of emergency, deporting people with political antecedents. We are researching this story in Andalucia. That said, the archive is not exclusively of historical interest… It transcends the theme of the war or the Francoist repression. It could also be used by anthropologists, sociologists, linguists… Some of the interviews give us an insight into idioms of the Andalusian languages no longer in use or trades that no longer exist, for example.

JV: How is this information organized and how accessible is it?

MSM: We store our records digitally, mainly on DVD and hard drives. Each record is tagged and catalogued, and also linked to minutes logged into a database to make the researchers’ job easier. All material is open to public access and we are hoping to make the catalogue[13] available on-line very soon. The actual interviews, however, are rather hefty video and audio files, so they still represent a bit of a challenge to put on-line. But that would be one of our goals.

Also in Seville, I talk to historian and archaeologist Juan Luis Fernandez Castro from the association Foro por la Memoria. Founded as an initiative of members of the Spanish Communist Party (PCE, in Spanish) in 2002, Foro was created to uphold the historical memory of all of those who fought against fascism in Spain, assisting any families suffering difficulties in their search for lost relatives, owing both to a lack of funds and of a common and internationally recognized policy for locating, accessing and exhuming the burial sites. Over the span of a week, I build a working relationship with his team and learn about their current and past projects, the mapping of mass graves in Andalucia, the protocols behind their fieldwork and the shortcomings of the new legislation. We decide to coordinate an audiovisual project together in 2008 as we discuss how Spain, despite the new legislation, continues to violate the UN’s Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Violations of International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law since 1977. I translate a column from The Guardian that echoes our conversation:

“Only this week did Spain finally pass a "historical memory" law, honouring Franco's victims. The law makes it easier to find and dig up graves, removes Francoist plaques and statues from public buildings and opens up archives. Compared to the trials, purges or truth commissions of countries such as South Africa, this is timid stuff - and it also comes unusually late.”[14]

As I study some of the Foro’s photographic dossiers[15], I remember photographer Francesc Torres’ words in a recent article:

“When you see an open grave you know, if you did not before, that it is absolutely necessary to recover the victims, to take them out of the gutters, the dumps, the wells, and the mines, all anonymous holes they were thrown into like animals. Some of these common graves are now underneath new housing developments, sports centres or supermarkets where people live, play and shop ignorantly... an open grave is a book with pages of earth where words are written with the letters of bodies, bones, fractures, bullet holes, Mauser bullet shells, hand gun shells, buttons, buckles, clothes, shoes, pencils, glasses, watches, and rings.”[16]

Yet, not everyone seems willing to confront these truths. The conservative Popular Party refused to participate at all in the drafting of the historical memory bill and is against the new legislation, which they consider an unnecessary meddling with the past. BBC reports:

“Our transition from dictatorship to democracy is an example in Europe and I think that we've got to cherish this and not re-open wounds that have already been able to be cured, wounds that are healed," said Gustavo de Aristegui, a spokesman for the Popular Party.”[17]

Having lost that argument in the Parliament, some are now politicizing the sensitivities on the other side of the fence. Conservative newspaper El Mundo condemned the law for “talking only of the victims of Francoism without mentioning the others”[18] – in actual fact, the law recognizes the victims on both sides of the conflict.

The Guardian:

“The more subtle issues arising from Francoism have still not been debated. Sectarian Spain has no Vaclav Havel prepared to say that the line separating regime collaborators from opponents runs not between people, but through them.

Instead, the dead of both sides have been hurled around. That the left was also cruel is without doubt. The Vatican's beatification of 498 civil war martyrs - priests, monks and nuns killed by the left - last weekend was a reminder of that.”[19]

Indeed, it should be noted that over the 40 years of dictatorship the victims of these murders were already rightly hailed as martyrs, their killers were pursued and, where possible, brought to justice. Approximately 36,000 people were murdered on the Republican side from 1936 to 1939. It should also be noted that the Republican Government never allowed extrajudicial executions, registered all deaths and where possible investigated these murders, bringing the perpetrators to justice too.

Willing to engage in this conversation with representatives of the Roman Catholic Church in Seville, I visit the local church in the neighbourhood of La Macarena (a working class enclave in the centre of Seville, this is the place where my parents have always lived and where I was born; I learn from my father that the fascists used to call it “El Moscú Sevillano” – “Sevillian Moscow”) A much worshiped baroque wooden statue of the Virgin Mary, dating from the 16th Century, dominates the altar. Flanking the altar, the fascist emblem of the eagle, yoke and arrows. General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano - the corrupt and ruthless commander of the 4,000 troops that annihilated the defense of Seville and the architect of terrorist repression in Western Andalucia during the 40s was buried with honors here. His mausoleum dominates the entrance of the Basilica - fascism still hijacking the faith of the defeated today. No one is available to comment.

*****

As I wrap this reflective paper back in London, my brother sends me the following report:

Having warned the Socialist Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, against bowing to demands for the provision of moral compensation for those prosecuted, killed or tortured by the regime, former Franco Home Secretary (and founder of Spain’s opposition People’s Party) Manuel Fraga vows that, if successfully elected, his party would re-evaluate the bills passed by the current government. Still holding a powerful political weight in the Autonomous Region of Galicia, Fraga also declared that Franco set the basis of a more orderly Spain and, after comparing the fascist general with Napoleon, affirmed that the judgment of history on Franco will be positive[20].

I print the article and jot the following words on it before filing the document: “amnesia”, “silence” and “denial”.

Bibliography

· E.C. Harris, “Principios de estratigrafía arqueológica”. Crítica, Barcelona, 1991.

· Hugh Thomas, “The Spanish Civil War”. London, Penguin, 2003 (reissue)

· Pierre Vilar, “Historia de España”. Barcelona, Critica, 1990 (reissue)

· Paul Preston, “Comrades. Portraits from the Spanish Civl War”, HarperCollins, London, 1999.

· F. Espinosa, “La Justicia de Queipo : Violencia selectiva del terror fascista en la II División en 1936: Sevilla, Huelva, Cádiz, Córdoba, Málaga y Badajoz”. Crítica, Barcelona, 2006.

· S. Juliá, (Coord.), “Víctimas de la Guerra Civil”. Planeta Deagostini, Barcelona, 2005.

· Francisco Rodriguez Nogal, “Caínes al amanecer 1936”. INGRASEVI, Carmona (Seville) 2001.

· Francisco Rodriguez Nogal, “Al paso alegre de la paz 1939”. INGRASEVI, Carmona (Seville) 2004.

· Miguel Hernández, “Cancionero y Romancero de Ausencia(1938-1942)”. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe (Austral), 1990.

· Marcos Ana, “Decidme cómo es un árbol”. Tabla Rasa, Barcelona, 2007.

· Alberto Fernandez Ballesteros, “Papaoba”. RD Editores, 2006.

· Andrés Sopeña Monsalve, "El florido pensil. Memoria de la escuela nacionalcatólica", Crítica, Barcelona, 1994.

Selected Filmography

· Joris Ivens, “The Spanish Earth” (Spain, 1938)

· Basilio Martin Patino, “Nueve cartas a Berta” (Spain, 1966)

· Carlos Saura, “La Caza” (Spain, 1966)

· Basilio Martin Patino, “Canciones para despues de una guerra” (Spain, 1971)

· Basilio Martin Patino, “Caudillo” (Spain, 1974)

· Victor Erice, “El espiritu de la colmena” (Spain, 1974)

· Juan Antonio Bardem, “Siete dias de Enero” (Spain, 1979)

· Jaime Chavarri, “Las bicicletas son para el verano” (Spain, 1984)

· Luis Garcia Berlanga, “La vaquilla” (Spain, 1985)

· Basilio Martin Patino, “Madrid” (Spain, 1987)

· Jose Luis Cuerda, “La lengua de las mariposas” (Spain, 1999)

· Albert Boadella, “¡Buen viaje, excelencia!” (Spain, 2003)

· Tom Hooper, “Red Dust” (UK/South Africa, 2004)

· Emilio Martinez Lazaro, “Las 13 rosas” (Spain, 2007)

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[1] Miguel Hernandez, “Cancionero y Romancero de Ausencia” (“Songbook of Absences”) Incomplete, 1938-1942. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe (Austral), 1990, p.21

[2] Law 46/1977, approved on October 15th, 1977, “Ley de Amnistia”

[3] Law 52/2007, approved on December 26^th, 2007, “Ley para la Memoria Histórica”. Please refer to the appendix of this project for the full text of the bill, as published in the BOE* n.310, Thursday December 27^th,2007.

* BOE, or Boletín Oficial del Estado, is the official newspaper of the Government of Spain that publishes the laws of the Cortes Generales - the nation's legislature, comprising the Senate and the Congress.

[4] The estimated number of the executed by the Nationalists is 200,000, mostly civilians (S.Juliá, “Victimas de la Guerra Civil”, Planeta, Barcelona, 2005)
Researchers for the mapping of mass graves programme in Andalucia estimate over 648 sites and 53,000 victims in that region alone. El Pais: http://www.elpais.com/articulo/andalucia/mapa/fosas/contabiliza/53000/victim%20as/comunidad/elpepuespand/20071130elpand_9/Tes

[5] “Spain digs up civil war graves”, BBC July 18^th 2002: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2136747.stm

[6] Founded in 2000 by journalist Emilio Silva, the grandson of a republican murdered by fascist troops in Priaranza del Bierzo (Leon)

[7]“Spain digs up civil war graves”, BBC July 18^th 2002: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2136747.stm

[8] “Cuando Ana miro dentro de la fosa” Javier Lafuente, El Pais 24th September 2007: http://www.elpais.com/articulo/espana/Ana/miro/dentro/fosa/elpepuesp/20070924elpepinac_10/Tes?print=1

[9] “Spectres of fascist past back to haunt Spain” Sarah Wildman, The Guardian, November 6, 2007: http://www.guardian.co.uk/spain/article/0,,2206246,00.html

[10] “The Falange blue-shirted militias, with their Roman salutes and their ritual chants of ‘Arriba Espaňa!’ (Arise, Spain!) and ‘Espaňa! Una! Espaňa! Grande ! Espaňa ! Libre !’ (Spain – One, Free, Great), aped Nazi and Fascist models. From 1933 to 1936, Falange Espaňola functioned as the shock-trooops of the haute bourgeoisie, provoking street brawls and helping to generate the lawlessness which, exaggerated by the right-wing press, was used to justify the military rising.” (Paul Preston, “Comrades. Portraits from the Spanish Civl War, HarperCollins, London, 1999, p.78)

[11] “Spectres of fascist past back to haunt Spain” Sarah Wildman, The Guardian, November 6, 2007: http://www.guardian.co.uk/spain/article/0,,2206246,00.html

[12] “Civil War legacy divides Spain”, Danny Wood, BBC, July 18^th, 2006: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5192228.stm

[13] A sample catalogue is enclosed in the appendix.

[14] “After Franco, the forgetting”, Giles Tremlett, The Guardian, November 3^rd, 2007: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2204475,00.html

[15] A sample photographic dossier is enclosed in the appendix.

[16] “Spectres of fascist past back to haunt Spain” Sarah Wildman, The Guardian, November 6, 2007: http://www.guardian.co.uk/spain/article/0,,2206246,00.html

[17] “Civil War legacy divides Spain”, Danny Wood, BBC, July 18^th, 2006: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5192228.stm

[18] “Spanish MPs to vote on law recognising Franco’s victims”, Paul Hamilos, The Guardian, October 11^th , 2007: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2204475,00.html

[19] “After Franco, the forgetting”, Giles Tremlett, The Guardian, November 3^rd, 2007: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2204475,00.html

[20] "Fraga: "El franquismo ha sentado las bases para una España con más orden"" El Pais, December 30, 2007: http://www.elpais.com/articulo/espana/Fraga/franquismo/ha/sentado/bases/Espana/orden/elpepuesp/20071230elpepunac_8/Tes