[page-n-1]
English

FAMILY ITEMS
Life histories
Águeda Campos Barrachina
and Amando Muñiz Verdayes
A wartime photograph and some pieces of
fabric from old clothes were the only inheritance that Pepe and Vicente received, at the
ages of five and six respectively, when their
parents were shot. Águeda and Amando
were murdered together on the same day, 5
April 1941, and were thrown into the same
grave, no 135. Previously, they had been
jailed for two years in the prisons of Santa
Clara and the Modelo in Valencia.
Both had been active members of the
Valencia branch of the Partido Obrero de
Unificación Marxista (POUM) and were firmly committed to the ideals of the Republic.
Vicente recalled that one year, on 14 April,
Águeda had raised a Republican flag in the
prison courtyard, made out of a piece of
cloth and a stick – an act for which she was
put in solitary confinement.
Vicente and Pepe also served a prison sentence, since they were incarcerated with
their mother. As children from the losing
side, their internment continued for many
years afterwards, in the San Francisco
Javier orphanage in Valencia.

Salvador Lloris Epila
Salvador liked to play the guitar. He was
born in 1899 in Alfara del Patriarca and was
a farmer. They say that he cooked a very
good paella. He married Amalia Ponce and
they had two children, Salvador and Manolo.
Salvador believed in God; politically he was
on the left, but his family did not know of his
political leanings. What they do know is that
he had served in the Spanish army in the
Moroccan War and that, following the 1936
coup, he had fought on the side of the Republic.
After the war, he was accused of participating in the death of a member of the
Civil Guard and was sentenced to death.
Although the village priest tried to intervene on his behalf, Salvador was shot on
17 July 1939. The next day, the family was
able to recover his body and bought a coffin
to bury him individually, rather than in the
common grave.
Salvador’s story remained untold for years,
until his granddaughter, Pilar Lloris, came
across some letters and several objects that
Salvador had made in prison. She decided
to find out who he was and what had happened to him.

José Giner Navarro
On 21 July 1939, nine men from Quart de
Poblet, members of the Local Revolutionary
Committee, were shot in Paterna. Among
them was José, the youngest, whom everyone called Pepín.
José was twenty-eight years old, unmarried,
and had no children. For decades his sisters
Carmen and Conxeta preserved his memory in silence. But in 2008, on the occasion
of a public tribute in the town, Carmen
shared this family memory with her granddaughter, Pilar Taberner. Since then, with
only a photo, a farewell letter, and the chilling phrase “they killed him”, Pilar has been
able to reconstruct part of her great-uncle’s life story: that he was a day labourer, a
member of the UGT and of the Juventudes
Socialistas Unificadas, and had fought on the
Teruel front.
While he was in prison his sisters walked
from their town to the Modelo every day to
bring him food and clothes. One day, when
they arrived, they were told that the “nine
from Quart de Poblet” had been taken out
and shot.

Vicente Roig Regal

turn until 1969. Felipe and Pepe were shot
in Paterna in 1939.
None of Pepe’s personal belongings are
preserved. The family knows that he was a
day labourer and a member of the Iberian
Anarchist Federation (FAI), and that his
body was thrown into grave 115. Felipe,
identified in grave 22, worked in the fields
and in the steel industry. He was affiliated
with the Communist Party, was a member
of the rice growers’ union and was a founding member of his town’s music band, the
Puig de Santa Maria.
His execution left his wife, María Duato,
in charge of four children and a father-inlaw with dementia. María had to resort to
the black market to survive and was unable
to wear mourning for her husband. Even
so, she always spoke of the family history,
which she took care to pass on to her grandchildren and great-granddaughters.
Before she died, Maria asked to be buried
with some pieces of fabric from her husband’s clothes and with the farewell letter
he had sent her.

Vicente Orti Garrigues

From September 1939 to October 1940,
Vicente, from Alginet, was held in several
different prisons: in Carlet, in San Miguel
de los Reyes and in the Modelo. He was
incarcerated for almost four hundred days,
but during that time he did not lose contact
with his wife, Julia Tortosa. The family still
has 112 letters that they wrote to each other
describing the fear and longing inside and
outside the prison.
Vicente’s granddaughter, Verónica Roig,
says that the discovery of these letters and
her visits to the Paterna cemetery set her
thinking. Until then, the family had said
only that her grandfather had died in the
war. The desire to know what had really
happened brought to light some extraordinary stories – for example, when Vicente
met his infant son in prison: the family hid
the baby in a laundry basket, after bribing
the guard with a pot of rice.
Out of love for his son, Vicente made a
ring, some espadrilles and a pendant that
he sent home. But no more was heard from
him after 31 October 1940, the day of his
execution.

“Rosario, don’t go, he’s no longer there.”
This is how Rosario Fita learned that her
husband Vicente had been shot. On 27
March 1940, this shoemaker from Torrent,
a prison officer and a member of the
Communist Party, was murdered.
The nightmare had begun with the end of
the war. Vicente, who had left everything to
fight at the front, had to go into hiding; and
Rosario, pregnant, suffered interrogations
from the Civil Guard who terrified her by
pointing their rifles at her belly.
After Vicente’s execution, the repression
continued. The family were dispossessed of
their house and survived by begging, selling animal excrement and living in a stable, with the stigma of being “the wife and
daughters of a rojo”.
On that 27 March, Rosarito, Libertad and
Dolores lost their father. He had written
poems and letters to them from prison.
Rosarito learnt by heart every line of the
poem that she received when she turned five.
Today, Charo and María José, Vicente’s
granddaughters, lovingly preserve the objects that speak of his memory.

Felipe Carreres Flores

Antonio Monzó Fita

The Carreres brothers suffered the
Francoist repression first hand. Ramon was
forced into exile in France and did not re-

Antonio was tipped off that he was in danger,
but he refused to take the boat from Alicante,
because he had no blood on his hands. At

[page-n-2]
the age of thirty-five, he was locked up in the
Modelo prison in Valencia, and two months
later, on 21 July 1939, he was shot.
María Cruz, his wife, and Paco, Antonio
and Maria, his children, said nothing about
this murder until the return of democracy
in the 1970s. They knew the story, but they
remained silent out of fear and also to protect the family.
For more than eighty years, Paco has kept
the only surviving objects that belonged
to his father: two photographs, an identification card from the prison and a wallet
with his initials, which contained two letters hidden away. Paco’s son, Toni, did not
know the story until recently: that is, that
his grandfather was one of the “nine from
Quart de Poblet”, that he was buried individually next to grave 21 and that he was
murdered for being a member of UGT and
of the Local Revolutionary Committee.

Manuel Baltasar Hernández Sáez
Gracia Espí’s last wish was that her granddaughter, Amelia Hernández, should inherit a box which she had kept in a dresser,
and which Amelia was not to open until
after her grandmother’s death. The box
contained belongings of Gracia’s husband,
Manuel Baltasar, shot on 29 July 1939, at
the age of twenty-three. They were the
pieces of fabric and the lock of hair that
Leoncio Badía, the Paterna undertaker,
had given her to confirm the identity of her
husband, buried in grave 22.
Gracia and Manuel Baltasar married
young and lived for a time in France. In
1934 they returned to Spain, and after two
years the coup d’état changed their lives for
ever. Manuel, who was a driver and a member of UGT, was arrested in Carlet in 1939
and sent to San Miguel de los Reyes. The
family remembers that, in prison, he kissed
the photo of his son George so much that it
disintegrated.
Amelia keeps her grandfather’s belongings
just as she inherited them, wrapped in newspaper from the time, which bears some soil
from the grave and some blood stains.

José Manuel Murcia Martinez
When grave 94 was opened, Carolina
Martínez felt that she could finally do
something that had been denied to her
mother and her grandmother. Her grandfather José Manuel had been thrown into
the grave, along with thirty-eight others
shot on 6 November 1939. After the long
exhumation process, Carolina was happy to
learn that the DNA analysis confirmed that
individual 5 from this grave was indeed her
grandfather.
Although she had not met him, she knew
from her grandmother Carolina Ródenas
that he had been a straightforward, serious,
hard-working man. José Manuel combined
working as a day labourer with the defence
of socialist ideals. He held various positions:
he was a member of the UGT secretariat
in Valencia, an agricultural councillor in

Ayora, and a promoter of local agricultural
collectivization.
His wife was sentenced to twelve years and
one day in prison, and her son Manuel was
also jailed. In addition, they were forced to
house Francoist soldiers at home, a punishment that frightened their daughters,
Amparo and Amalia, who slept in a room
with the door locked.

Pablo Lacruz Muñoz
Pablo was a peasant and was born in Chera
in 1901. He married Dolores Igual, with
whom he had two children, Activo and
Pablo. Committed to socialism, he founded
the branch of UGT in the town and served
as a councillor at the Town Hall. Like most
Republicans, when the war ended he was
arrested; he was imprisoned, prosecuted for
“adherence to the rebellion” in a summary
trial, and shot.
Pablo was murdered in Paterna on 9
November 1939 and, for more than fifteen
years, the family suffered continuous repression of various kinds. Periodically, the Civil
Guard threatened to dispossess them of their
property, and they endured many hardships.
Pablo was executed along with thirty-seven
others. His son Activo refused to forget him
and he copied their names from the book
of deaths in the Paterna cemetery – now
lost – so that they would always be with
him. Years later, he asked his daughter,
Gloria Lacruz, to type up the list so that it
wouldn’t be mislaid. Activo carried it in his
trouser pocket every day of his life.

Vicente Mollà Galiana
While in prison, Vicente treasured a photograph of his wife and daughter, taken in
Ontinyent, his town, in June 1938. One
year and five months later, on the back of
this photograph, Vicente write his hurried
farewell letter.
In just forty-six words, he said goodbye,
warned of possible reprisals and wrote his
address in a desperate attempt to notify his
family: “whoever picks this up, please take
it to this address.”
The family memory recalls that he threw the
photo out from the truck that was taking him
to Paterna from the prison. Someone picked
it up and sent it to Ontinyent. Consuelo
Gandía and Concepción Mollá, widow and
orphan (barely three years old) had to face
the hardships of the post-war period and a
dictatorship that treated the families of the
executed without the slightest mercy.
This photograph and the unusual story behind it have kept alive the memory
of Vicente, the cabinetmaker shot on 6
November 1939, at the age of thirty-one,
for his socialist ideals and for having been
a councillor in his hometown of Ontinyent.

Daniel Navarro Garcia
For many years, María Ángeles Navarro has
been fighting to find her grandfather, Daniel
Navarro, and to recover his memory. In

2014, she applied to the Ministry of Justice
for the accreditation of recognition and personal
reparation that this institution now provides.
Daniel was arrested in his hometown,
Algemesí, in 1939, and passed through
the prisons of Alzira and the Modelo in
Valencia. In the letters he sent his children
during his imprisonment he begged them
for notebooks and pencils so as to be able
to draw and write, surely as a means of escape, since Daniel was a draftsman, painter,
and filmmaker.
His murder, on 25 May 1940, made
Daniel, Josefa, Amparo and Manuel orphans. They had already lost their mother,
Atilana Valenzuela, during the war. The
news reached their home in a letter written
by Francisco Canet, Daniel’s inseparable
friend in prison.
Some time later Daniel was pardoned, but
his body already lay in grave 114. María
Ángeles keeps alive the hope – as she says
– of “being able to meet you, grandfather”,
while she awaits the results of the DNA tests.

César Sancho de la Pasión
Libertad remembered vividly the moment
her father was arrested: “They came to
our home; he was in the yard, they took
him away and he never came back.” She
was one of the youngest of the eight children – César, Vicentico, Enrique, Carmen,
Enrique, Amada and Amado – of César
Sancho and Carmen Granell, who lived in
Meliana.
They would only see her father again in prison – and only on special days, like the day of
La Merced, patron saint of prisons. Carmen,
on the other hand, often went to take him a
basket with clean clothes and food.
The family knew in advance the day of his
execution. On 23 October 1940, Carmen,
accompanied by her uncle Fabri and her
friend Paquita, went to the Paterna cemetery. She washed his body, placed it in a
coffin that she had bought and put in a glass
bottle with his name inside.
César, a member of UGT and president
of the Municipal Defence Committee,
was identified by DNA testing and was exhumed from grave 120 in 2020, along with
twelve colleagues from the Meliana local
council.

Absences
There are stories that were not told, because
of the fear of reprisals. The policy of terror
of the Franco dictatorship struck into the
hearts of the victims’ families – so much so,
in fact, that this fear has been handed down
through the generations. The habit of hiding the belongings of loved ones, sometimes
even destroying them, denying or recasting
the stories or sharing them only behind
closed doors bear witness to the effectiveness of the silence imposed for decades.
The passage of time has diluted many of
these stories, and some have been erased
forever.

[page-n-3]