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Whether or not we realize it, this traumatic past affects the whole
of our society, because it is part of who we are. We must understand that building memory is a collective responsibility.

English

We know who they are
Hidden behind the statistics, which are overwhelming in their own
right, are the lives of real people, with names and surnames and
life stories. Although their memory has often endured inside the
families, in the public domain their lives have often been reduced
to the status of victims – as if their identity were defined only by
the last moment of their lives, that is, their execution and burial in
a mass grave.
Knowing who they were and what they had done before their murder helps to commemorate their lives, their personal and political
trajectories, their loves and relationships, their desires and struggles. Each name and each microhistory we recover helps to break
the silence and to save this moment of our past from oblivion.

OUTSIDE EXHIBITION
Archaeology, exhumations and illustrations
The exhumation of the mass graves of the Franco regime has become a very topical subject in Spain. Since the pioneering archaeological interventions carried out in 2000, and the passing of the
first Historical Memory Act, in 2007, the memory of Franco’s repression has forced its way into political debate and public opinion.
This boom in the interest in memory remains alive today, and has
helped to generate new knowledge and reflection on a recent past
whose effects are still with us today. This past is turned into news
through television, radio, the written press and social media.
One of the languages with the most potential to communicate the
complexity of a subject like this is illustration. Whether in cartoons
in newspapers or in comics and illustrated books, the depiction of
mass graves serves as a representation of the debate on historical
memory.
This collection of illustrations offers a visual journey that traces
issues such as the impunity of the perpetrators of the crimes and
of the Franco dictatorship as a whole, the comparison between the
victims and their executioners, silence and forgetting, and the role
of archaeology in the construction of democratic memory.

The past begins yesterday, and archaeology, a science
that specializes in its study, knows this very well.
Archaeology is well known as a discipline dedicated to
the discovery of past civilizations and ancient artefacts,
but this is not the whole story: in fact, archaeology
studies everything to do with human societies, from
prehistory to the most recent past, through a wide
range of sources: objects, landscapes, spaces, buildings,
writings, human remains... and, whenever possible,
oral testimonies as well.
Archaeology applies many tools and methods
that connect it with other disciplines, such as
history, anthropology and geology. It is a genuinely
interdisciplinary science.
Its cross-sectional perspective allows us to go beyond
the simple extraction of remains from the subsoil. In
reality, the aim of archaeology is to analyse, interpret
and disseminate knowledge of the past, with a firm
commitment to the realities and conflicts of the present.
The exhibition “The archaeology of memory. The
mass graves of Paterna” is a journey through our most
traumatic recent past. It which explains the role of
archaeology in the recovery of evidence and memories
of the repression carried out by the Franco regime.

ROOM IV

ROOM III

ROOM II
ROOM I

OUTSIDE EXHIBITION

ROOM I
THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE RECENT PAST
Contemporary conflicts and archaeology
Barbarity is a constant in the history of humankind. Genocide,
crimes against humanity, and the presence of mass graves are, unfortunately, part of our reality. The modern world has been a field
of experimentation in the use of violence and repression as mechanisms to legitimize power and to purge and eliminate dissent.
These traumatic pasts are often silenced; but sometimes the evidence resists, hidden away. The memory of a relative, the huts of
a concentration camp, the marking of a mass grave or the farewell letter of someone sentenced to death constitute irrefutable
evidence of the crimes committed.
Based on this evidence, archaeology – specifically, its forensic
branch – plays its part in the uncovering of these crimes and in
the retrieval of the bodies and the life stories of the victims. It also
identifies the scenes of the crimes and the places of memory, and
brings them to the attention of the world.

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Forensic archaeology
The key reference point for the recovery of victims of State violence is provided by the application of forensic archaeology in
Latin America. Argentina was one of the first countries to promote the investigation of the crimes perpetrated against its civilian
population during the military dictatorship.
This need to do justice represents the embryo of many of the scientific studies that have been carried out all over the world since
the 1980s. This practice is based on the guidelines and regulations
of international human rights.
In Spain, protocols of this kind were not implemented until the
early years of this century. They are now being applied in the investigation of the repression that characterized the Civil War and
the dictatorship. The families of the victims of Francoism have
always demanded from the public authorities the right to truth,
justice and reparation.
These demands are still valid today. However, Spanish legislation
does not admit legal proceedings in respect of the murders of
the dictatorship, on the grounds that the prescriptive period has
expired.

Knowing who they are
Opening the grave isn’t the end of the story – in fact, it’s only the
beginning. The victims must be named and the families must be
accompanied and given their voice. The trauma must become a
matter of reflection and public engagement.
It is a long, meticulous, complex process that sometimes yields unexpected results. A strong ethical commitment – both social and
professional – is essential.
Perhaps surprisingly, the genetic identification of the remains begins with something as unprepossessing as a cardboard box, where
the remains are kept while the researchers await the results of the
DNA tests.

Spain: postwar and repression
In 1939 the war in Spain came to an end, but this did not mean
that the country was in peace. As a result of the 1936 coup, General
Francisco Franco forcibly imposed a totally undemocratic military
regime, which lasted until 1975.
In this “new Spain” there was no place for civil rights, for political
parties or trade unions, or for any thought or conduct that deviated from the norm. Violence was institutionalized as a mechanism
of repression and propaganda, and invaded each and every sphere
of the lives of women and men. By means of imprisonment, summary trials and executions, the regime singled out and eliminated
the losers.
Faced with this situation, many found an escape route in exile
abroad. But the majority suffered an “internal exile” characterized
by violence: from public humiliation, through purges and forced
expropriations, to ideological and moral re-education and the brutality of sexual violence. The repression was even inflicted beyond
death.

ROOM II
PATERNA: MASS GRAVES AND MEMORY
The cemetery and the wall (el mur del Terrer)
The story of Paterna is an archetypal example of Franco’s postwar repression. This town, less than ten kilometres from Valencia,
preserves two important spaces of violence and memory: the wall
known as the mur del Terrer as a place of execution, and the municipal cemetery as a huge mass grave.
Over the course of almost two decades from 1939 to 1956), the
dictatorship murdered at least 2,237 people at this site, the vast
majority in the first five years. These crimes responded to a pre-

meditated policy of eliminating people that the Franco regime regarded as opponents.
The murders imposed silence and fear, but not oblivion. From the
outset, families secretly preserved the memory of their loved ones.
Some even managed to move the body immediately after the execution so that it would not be left in the common grave.
These acts and the demands for recognition, engendered above
all by widows and mothers, represent the starting-point of what
decades later would become the memorialist movement.

The archaeology of the graves
The process of the recovery of the victims begins with the families,
a long way from the graves themselves. It starts with the difficult
search for historical documentation and oral testimonies to compile information about the people killed and the places where they
were buried.
Once at the grave, the earth is dug away to look for the evidence
of the crimes. This is a rigorous process, carried out by a team of
experts, which requires exhaustive documentation of everything
that is uncovered in the subsoil, in order to reconstruct how the
grave was formed and filled: the bodies, the objects and, especially,
the different layers of earth.
The purpose of exhumations is not simply to empty graves, but to
recover the bodies and to be able to identify them. Yhe anthropological and forensic study of the remains, the interviews with the
living relatives, and the DNA analysis are vital parts of the process.
Although identification is not always possible, archaeology can
play a genuinely reparative role for families. Through the exhumation we can physically and symbolically connect the present and
the past, the surface and the subsoil, life and death – all embodied
in the search for the missing relatives.

Knowing where they are
In the Paterna cemetery alone, the Franco regime dug more than
150 mass graves. They are square cavities made in the ground,
measuring about 2x2 m, which cover a large part of the surface of
the old cemetery. Some of them are up to 6.5 metres deep.
The number of graves, the intensive use of space and the depths
of these pits reflect the premeditation and the atrocity of Franco’s
repression: the only reason for digging a grave several metres deep
is to fill it with corpses.

ROOM III
BEYOND THE MATERIAL
Inside the grave and outside
A spoon. A few buttons. A medal. A match box. At first glance,
they seem inconsequential, mundane objects. But when they come
from a space of repression, they take on a special significance: they
are expert evidence of the crimes and, in turn, they play a key role
in the processes of the construction of our recent memory.
For scientists, the objects constitute documents that help to provide
a context and can complement the identification of the victims.
For the families, they embody the memory of their loved ones and
thus have a profound sentimental value. And for society as a whole,
they arouse empathy and encourage reflection on this traumatic
past.

The exhumed objects
At the time of their murder, the victims had hardly any belongings
with them. But some of the items have been retrieved, and have
survived more than eighty years underground. Recovering them
helps us to form a snapshot of the people’s lives, and also of their
last moments, both in jail and lined up against the wall – moments
marked by cruelty and violence.

Although the dictatorship tried hard to depict those executed as
subversive and dangerous rojos (literally “reds”, or communists), the
exhumed materials illustrate a much more nuanced truth. What
they had in their pockets tells us about their personal and political
projects.
In the graves are men and women of different ages and origins.
There are members of the middle classes, of the liberal professions
and, above all, of the working class. These are people who defended a wide range of political beliefs and who in some cases had
played an active role in the political, military, social and cultural
life of the Republic. However, what united them, beyond their differences, was their opposition to Fascism.

Showcases of exhumed objects
Hunger and danger
Why would you have a spoon in your pocket? Who uses a lice
comb? Prisons were overcrowded places where infectious diseases
were rife and the diet was totally deficient. These subhuman, oppressive conditions meant that many died in prison before being
shot and others suffered from chronic illnesses, either physical or
mental.
Faith and popular religious feeling
The accusation of anti-clericalism was an argument used by the
dictatorship to discredit defenders of the Republic and to carry
out reprisals against them. Before the coup there had been acts of
violence against the Church, but the Republic had established itself as a secular state that nonetheless guaranteed the freedom of
worship. In fact, there are people in the graves bore devotional objects that identify them beyond any doubt as practising Catholics.
Repression and control
Imprisonment entailed the total deprivation of liberty and absolute surveillance: supervised routines, censorship, control of visits,
searches of belongings and a strict moral and ideological re-education. Individuals were stripped of their identity and become
part of a uniform mass of miscreants. The execution would be the
culmination of this violence.
Camaraderie
In the miserable conditions of the prison, cooperation and mutual support proliferated in the fight for survival. Sharing tobacco,
helping to read the newspaper and family letters, dividing a comb
into two parts or writing an address on a piece of paper to ask for
help or give references – all these acts bear witness to the creation
of affective bonds and solidarity.
Differences
A wooden button is not the same as a ornate metal cufflink. Nor is
a braided leather belt the same as a simple rope to hold up a pair
of trousers. Dress is a reflection of the social class. Clothing and
personal items also individualize personalities.
Escapes
Imprisonment was a double moral defeat: accepting the sentence
handed down in a trial that ignored recognized standards of justice, and accepting the imposition of a system antagonistic to their
ideals. Survival often involved finding mental escape routes, such
as smoking, playing with reused objects or clinging to elements
that evoked what had been lost.
“Las señaladas”: women who fell foul of the regime
Among all the violence suffered by women at the hands of the
openly paternalistic and misogynistic Franco regime, the death
sentence sought the elimination of those that the dictatorship considered to be “reds” beyond redemption. The twenty women shot
in Paterna, politically and intellectually committed to progressive
causes, were murdered for disobeying social norms.

Yearning
Having to cope with the isolation and uncertainty of a life behind
bars intensified the absence of loved ones. Memory can often be
stirred through objects. Some prisoners treasured personal items
from outside – a photo, a lock of hair. And, in turn, they made
objects with fruit stones, thread or esparto grass, which they sent
to their homes.
Communication
Over the course of the days, months, and even years that the sentences lasted, contact with the outside world was limited to occasional family visits and the arrival of mail. Writing in prison
became a lifeline, by maintaining the link with the outside world
through letters and cards that told the story of day-to-day lives.
This farewell letter, written in pencil, is a last goodbye.
Never forget
Despite the efforts of the Franco regime to erase the life and memory of these women and men, the families expressed their intention to recover the bodies from the moment of the murder. Among
the exceptional practices of resistance was to place in the grave
(with the aid of the undertaker) bouquets of flowers or identifying
objects such as handwritten notes with the name and surname of
the person shot.

Family items
The death of the victim caused a deep fracture. The anguish, however, began earlier, when the family had to deal with the loved
one’s disappearance, imprisonment, and death sentence after an
unlawful trial. The loss created a persistent wound that would be
aggravated by the social stigma of surviving as a relative of someone who had died in front of a firing-squad.
The families continued to suffer repression over many, many years.
Mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, sons and daughters of rojos were
subject to punishments and humiliations of all kinds. Facing this
trauma in a scenario of suffocating control like the dictatorship
provoked a variety of reactions. Some people made a conscious
effort to forget due to their pain and the fear of what others would
say. Others chose silence and decided not to speak, in order to survive. And still others, in private, took the risk of maintaining and
transmitting the memory of the victims to the coming generations.
Especially, women made the home a space of resistance where, in
secret, they remembered and talked about matters that they could
not mention outside. Often, they tried to relieve the sense of absence by keeping items which had belonged to the person who
disappeared, hidden away in drawers, and which were treasured
to preserve their memory.

ROOM IV
BUILDING THE DEMOCRATIC MEMORY
Victims of forgetting
After more than eighty years, the families still have to claim the
right to recover their relatives who disappeared, and thus for justice to be done. The blanket denial during the dictatorship was
followed in the democratic period by several decades of abandonment and institutional inaction. Only in recent years have the public powers begun to accept the need to implement public memory
policies.
The international human rights framework recognizes the right
to memory and the guarantee of non-recurrence as essential pillars of democratic societies. It demands: Truth, to know what happened in the past and to discuss what has been silenced; Justice, to
shed light on crimes committed and to fight against impunity; and
Reparation, to treat victims with the humanity they deserve and thus
help families to mourn their dead.

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