Of “great agreement.” This is how the members of the Assembly of Relatives and Historical Memory Associations of the Plaza de la Gavidia have described the determination of the state government, the Junta de Andalucía, the Provincial Council of Seville and the City Council of the capital of Seville to agree on a protocol of performance at the common grave of Monumento in the San Fernando cemetery, in Seville.
The exhumation work on the remains of this grave, which could house the bodies of 2,616 victims of Franco’s regime, had already been put out to tender by the previous municipal government (PSOE) but had remained on stand-by since the change of Executive (PP) despite having an allocated budget of 400,000 euros, as Juan Morillo, an activist from the association, explained at the end of the year. Today, the same memoirist is pleased that this understanding between administrations has been possible, a “product” of the “struggle” and “claims” of the Assembly.
On the other hand, Morillo emphasizes the need to extrapolate this pact to the national level so that all the mass graves resulting from the Coup d’état of ’36, the subsequent military repression and the dictatorial regime can be exhumed.
The signing of this protocol will foreseeably take place in the month of April, at which time the details of this “great agreement” will be known, although as the Secretary of State for Democratic Memory, Fernando Martínez, announced yesterday, It will follow the successful model that has prevailed in the work at Pico Reja, the largest mass grave in Spain, also located in the San Fernando cemetery.
Here, the exhumation work has managed to rescue and identify a total of 1,786 people who were victims of military repression under the command of General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, a task that “is not easy at all,” according to the person responsible for this matter. It is in Pico Reja where it is thought that the body of Blas Infante could be found, considered the Father of the Andalusian Homeland that was merged in August 1936.
“Let’s not be fooled, and this is what I let the relatives know: after the exhumation, the identification is around 30% or 35%,” acknowledged Martínez, who has expressed everyone’s will to resolve this problem, because “there are many families who are waiting and many memorial associations.”
On the other hand, the secretary has insisted that the Democratic Memory “is not a question of one or the other, but of humanity, which anchors its bases in Human Rights and that international humanitarian organizations are also requiring it of us.”
The first contacts between administrations to address the Monument issue occurred in November 2023 based on a project by the Seville City Council that had already carried out search, investigation, location and delimitation work on the grave. As a result, a new historic achievement was achieved this Wednesday: an agreement between administrations to exhume the remains of the grave, the first step for work to begin in the area.
Based on this agreement, Juan Morillo insists on the need to promote a “national plan” for investigation and excavation of all graves, in order to “end the impunity of Franco’s regime.” “There is money and the path is the political will that the administrations are showing,” he explained, while pointing out the need to end the “impunity of Francoism.”
