Memoria Perdida | In Search of Spain's Lost Memory
To this day the bodies of up to 114,000 disappeared from the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, and the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, 1939-1975, lie in unmarked mass graves in roadsides, on the edges of towns and villages, in ravines or in fields.
Memoria Perdida comprises photographs of the sites of the mass graves and related atrocity sites that have not been opened or dignified to this day. Many sites have been lost, have been hidden by new constructions or have disappeared without any hint or sign remembering it’s cruel past. The lack of historical memory, justice and truth that I encountered at most of the locations was pathetic and upsetting.
I intended to approach the atrocity sites as neutrally as possible and to respond to what I would find and feel. I captured the places as close to the same hour, day and season of the year of the killings as possible. Most photographs were taken after sunset and before sunrise, the preferred hour for “walking” and executing people. The emptiness and silence that caught me when visiting the sites gives a certain serenity to the landscapes in strong contrast to the horror occurred. Whilst the sites were impregnated with human traces, it was the human absence that stroke me the most. It made me think about the victims and somehow re-established their presence into the empty landscape.
Víznar III (Barranco de Víznar), Granada. (2016)
Between 2,500 and 3,000 people are believed to have been buried in this ravine in the years 1936 to 1951. And according to oral testimonies more than 6,500 people were murdered along the road between Víznar and Alfacar. Most of them were teachers, university professors, day labourers and other workers who had been detained by Falangist squads commanded by the military forces.
Víznar II (Barranco de Víznar), Granada. (2016)
The pharmacist and feminist Milagro Almenara Pérez, 36, was murdered on 2 November 1936 along with Rosario Fregenal Piñar, Rosa Segura Calero and Concha Pertíñez Tabasco between Víznar and Alfacar. When only 16, Almenara had enrolled in the faculty of pharmacy at the University of Granada, one of the few women of the time to pursue higher education. She obtained a Bachelor's degree, coming second from the top. Almenara was active in the Granada socialist movement and was known as the ‘red pharmacist’.
Víznar I (Sierra de Alfacar), Granada. (2016)
The poet and playwright, Federico García Lorca, accused of being a communist and homosexual, was murdered at dawn on 17 or 18 August 1936 between Víznar and Alfacar, along with a school teacher, Dióscoro Galindo, and the anarchists Francisco Galadí and Joaquín Arcollas. Their bodies, like those of thousands more, are still missing.
Víznar IV (Llanos de Corbera), Granada. (2016)
This is where the remains of Federico García Lorca and his fellow victims are supposed to be buried. The area had open wells and a shooting range during the years of repression. There may be as many as 400 victims at the bottom of these wells, among them Lorca, the school teacher and the two anarchists, shot on 17 or 18 August 1936. It has been waste ground since 1998 when the socialist mayor of Alfacar earmarked it for a football pitch.
Barranco del Carrizal, Órgiva, Granada. (2016)
A levee built in 2003, officially to prevent garbage from washing down the ravine into the reservoir below. Human remains surfaced during the works and keep doing so after heavy rains. On 11 August 1936, Manuel López López, deputy mayor of Lanjarón, and his sons Antonio and Félix, were shot by the Guardia Cívil and Falangists and disappeared in this ravine. A third son, Miguel, was murdered further down the valley two weeks later. After the fall of Malaga, and towns of the Alpujarra and Granada coast, trucks would arrive full of prisoners, who were shot and their bodies thrown into the common graves. Some 4,000 people were killed and buried in quicklime in this ravine.
Cementerio de San José, Granada. (2016)
Manuel Carmona Ruiz, 35, a metallurgist and trade unionist who voluntarily turned himself in to the authorities, was accused of illegal possession of weapons and executed here on 15 August 1936 at 5 am. Between 1936 and 1956, 3,969 people were executed at the walls of the cemetery, including two mayors, a municipal judge, several professors and the rector of the University of Granada. In 1956 Ricardo Beneito Sopena was the last person to be shot here.
Cementerio de San Juan, Badajoz. (2016)
In 2009 a new and higher wall was built to hide the original cemetery wall, a symbol of the Francoist repression. After the conquest of Badajoz on 14 August 1936 the rebels sacked the city and murdered between 1,800 and 4,000 people. Many were executed on this spot.
Cementerio de San Rafael, Málaga. (2020)
After February 1937, the occupation of Málaga, 4,471 people were murdered here. The exhumation of 2,840 bodies in 2006 unearthed one of the biggest extermination sites of the Francoist repression in Spain. The names of the victims are engraved on the pyramid. However the park on the site of the mass graves is in a deplorable state with rubbish all over it and neighbours letting their dogs do their necessities all around the place.
Palacio de Congresos (former bullring), Badajoz. (2016)
On 14 August 1936 thousands had been rounded up here to be executed. In 2006, 70 years later, the bullring was demolished and replaced with the Badajoz Congress Centre.
Castuera I (Concentration Camp), Badajoz. (2016)
This pedestal once carried a cross that presided over the main square of the camp and in front of which prisoners' inspections were held and religious-patriotic ceremonies celebrated. The camp had 84 barracks laid out around the square in eight streets. Between 8,000 and 9,000 prisoners (some studies claim as many as 20,000) were held here from April 1939 to March 1940.
Castuera II (Concentration Camp), Badajoz. (2016)
The Gamonita mine shown here and other mines around the concentration camp are believed to contain hundreds of people, disappeared from April 1939 to March 1940. According to prisoner testimony the ‘cuerda india’ was practised, which consisted in throwing prisoners bound by the waist into the abyss and finishing them off with hand grenades.
Castuera III (Concentration Camp), Badajoz. (2016)
From 1939 to 1940, hundreds of prisoners were eliminated in the countryside or ‘taken for a walk’ and shot by Falangist groups of the area. Among the early victims was José González Barrero, mayor of Zafra, who was picked up in the camp by Falangists and disappeared between 26 and 29 April 1939. The Concentration Camp of Castuera fulfilled the functions of classification, repression and selective annihilation.
Llano de Maja (El Teide), Tenerife. (2017)
Spain’s Canary Island, Tenerife, was not exempt from atrocities. The coup authorities and the Francoist militias murdered more than 400 people on the island after 18 July 1936 of whom 68 are still registered as missing. According to oral testimony and research work an undefined number of ‘disappeared’ are believed to have been thrown into mass graves or caves around the Llano de Maja within the Teide National Park.
San Andrés, Santa Cruz de Tenerife. (2017)
After 18 July 1936. On this coast victims of reprisals were thrown into the sea from boats, in sacks weighed down with stones, sometimes when they were still alive. In one case fishermen managed to rescue a victim and helped him to hide in a cave on the coast of Anaga. For months they took him food, though he finally surrendered.
Valle de los Caídos III (Cuelgamuros), Madrid. (2016)
The Valley of the Fallen, a monument to the heroes of Francoism, is the site of the largest mass grave in Spain. Built by the forced labour of political prisoners, and inaugurated on 1 April 1959, it contains the remains of 33,833 people, transported from all over Spain, among them the fascist leader of the Spanish Falange José Antonio Primo de Rivera, and later Francisco Franco himself was buried here.
Valle de los Caídos I (Cuelgamuros), Madrid. (2016)
The bodies of 12,410 unidentified Republicans, victims of the dictator, were transferred here, from 1959, without the permission or knowledge of their families. The relatives of Ramiro and Manuel Lapeña, for example, learned only a few years ago that they were no longer in the grave where they had been laying flowers for more than 60 years.
Valle de los Caídos II (Cuelgamuros), Madrid. (2016)
Rainwater has been allowed to leak through fissures in the granite cliff out of which the monument, inaugurated in 1959, was carved, flooding parts of the mass graves and leaving wooden boxes containing bones to rot and fall apart.
Monte de Estépar II, Burgos. (2016)
Mount Estépar, secluded by its thick tree cover and with easy to dig, sandy soil, was the ideal location for extermination in the province of Burgos. It was located just 21km from the town of Burgos and well connected to the central prison by the road that led to Valladolid. More than 300 people were shot here between August and October 1936. They were ‘taken out’ from the Burgos prison under the false pretext of being released, and instead handed over to Falangists who, with help from the Civil Guard, transferred them directly to this place to be executed.
Monte de Estépar III, Burgos. (2016)
This grave on Mount Estépar measuring 4.70 x 1.90m contained 26 bodies in three layers, murdered between August and October 1936. Mass executions were carried out in the dark of night and contrary to what happened with most of the ‘paseados’, the bodies were not left exposed for days but were immediately buried in ready prepared mass graves. A total of 96 bodies were exhumed from four such graves between July 2014 and April 2015.
Monte de Estépar II, Burgos. (2016)
Stones placed at grave sites inscribed with victims’ names help families honour missing loved ones, murdered between August and October 1936. There may well be other graves, including one of women only. But many human remains will never be found because they have been buried under the major land excavations necessary for construction of the high-speed train tracks and the A-62 highway.
Tresviso I (La Mesa), Cantabria. (2016)
After the fall of the northern front of the civil war on 21 October 1937, many fighters fled to the Asturias mountains, forming guerrilla groups in the most rugged areas such as the Liébana Valley.
Tresviso II (La Mesa), Cantabria. (2016)
Avelino Fernández Bravo, a 29-year-old lieutenant in Battalion 257 of the Army of the North, was heading home after the fall of the North when he was murdered and buried somewhere near the plateau of La Mesa in November 1937. A married man, he was also a militant member of the anarcho-syndicalist trade union, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo.
Areces I (Field of the Basques), Las Regueras, Asturias. (2016)
A dovecot stands beside a trench where locals buried some 80 gudaris, as soldiers of the Basque army were called. Around noon on 23 February 1937 the pressure of the Francoists forced the army to retreat in disarray, preventing the evacuation of the 80 wounded from an improvised field hospital established in the Palace of Areces. They were discovered and murdered ‒ mostly by bayonet.
Areces ll (Field of the Basques), Las Regueras, Asturias. (2016)
These fields are now reserved for pasture because in the past ploughing has turned up human remains. Eighty-seven Basque militiamen are still listed as missing in the area, since 23 February 1937, though the remains of commander Cándido Saseta Etxeberria were recovered in 2008.
O Candedo, Ourol, Lugo. (2016)
Three women of the Casabella family who lived there - María Xosé, her daughter Felicitas and 13-year old grand-daughter Encarna - were murdered, their cattle killed and grain destroyed. Their bodies, initially buried in a common grave near the entrance of the cemetery in Ourol, were trashed after construction works. The Falangists tried to surround the member of the socialist Unión General de Trabajadores, Alejandro Templás, who escaped badly wounded and died shortly after near Ourol.
O Amenal I, O Pino, A Coruña. (2016)
On 20 August 1936, Falangists ordered five municipal councillors from Boimorto to run down this hill to machine-gun them from the road. They were part of a group of 17 councillors who had been denounced by a parish priest. Two of them, Ramón Vázquez Garea and Ramón Sánchez Rapela, were shot in the back as they did so. Neighbours buried them and cared for the grave for decades, but due to changes in land use ‒ it is currently a plantation of eucalyptus ‒ the grave has been lost.
O Amenal II, O Pino, La Coruña. (2016)
Today the former main road to Santiago de Compostela is a popular pilgrim route. In 2017, a grave containing the bodies of the three other municipal councillors, (Caitán García Vázquez, Isidro and Andrés Filloy López), murdered on 20 August 1936, was excavated on the left side of the road. They refused to run down the hill and were shot here instead.
San Juan de Ortoño I, Ames, La Coruña. (2016)
Another six councillors (Manuel Lopez Espiñeira, Ramón Enjamio Pombo, Antonio Felpete Budiño, Xoan Martínez Bao, José Tojo García and José Barreiro Pérez) were shot and thrown into a ditch near Ortoño, not far from this church, on the same day as the others, on 20 August 1936.
San Juan de Ortoño II, Ames, A Coruña. (2016)
The next morning, on 21 August 1936, the priest of San Juan saw that one victim wore a scapular and buried them in a common grave in the atrium of the church. The priest had death certificates drawn up, and though no names were included they gave the cause of death with photographs, so that, years later, their families could still identify them. As yet it has not been possible to recover the bodies.
Campo de la Rata (Sculpture Parc), A Coruña. (2016)
8 recruits from the city's infantry regiment, Antonio Barreiro Méndez, Manuel Ferreiro Novo, Juan González Horta, Luis López Gómez, Fernando Negreira Sánchez, Luis Neira Suárez, Manuel Obelleiro Meijide and Manuel Seoane Díaz, accused of revolting against their rebel leaders were executed. Between 25.07.1936 and 1.4.1939 hundreds of people, usually prisoners taken from the nearby prison, were executed here.
Saturrarán, Gipuzkoa and Bizkaia, Basque Country. (2020)
Saturrarán was a central prison for women between 1938 and 1944. More than 4000 republican prisoners passed through Saturrarán cells. It was demolished in 1987 and only a few traces remain. 116 women and 57 children died here. The prisoner’s children were considered "weak-minded" and many of them were given up for adoption to those related to the Francoist rulers.
Villafranca del Bierzo II, León. (2016)
A 28-year-old day labourer with leftist ideas, Inocencio Cristalino García, was buried by neighbours outside this cemetery. On 13 January 1937 he was finished off by the Guardia Civil after he jumped out of the van that was transporting him and leapt from the viaduct of Villafranca in a desperate attempt to escape. It was common practice to bury Republican victims of repression outside the walls of cemeteries, on secular ground.
Villafranca del Bierzo I, León. (2016)
A storage shed was later built on top of the grave that neighbours had dug for Inocencio Cristalino García, in January 1937.
Villalibre de la Jurisdicción I, León. (2016)
Sixteen-year-old Arsenio Macias was killed 500 metres from his home, between 1936 and 1937, in what is known as the ‘Villalibre curve’, and buried near an electrical transformer. He was murdered by Falangists because he refused to reveal the whereabouts of his older brother, Claudio, a Republican soldier, for whom they were searching.
Villalibre de la Jurisdicción II, León. (2016)
According to a great niece of the two brothers, Arsenio was tied to a tree and hacked to death with a machete, between 1936 and 1937. ‘They killed him for not betraying his brother,’ she said. The extension of the N-536 road has made it impossible to find his body and so reunite the two brothers in the same cemetery. However, a grave containing the remains of four residents of the nearby village of Priaranza del Bierzo was excavated in this same area in 2009.
Villalibre de la Jurisdicción III, León. (2016)
After returning to his village once the front of Asturias had fallen, in 1937, Claudio Macías lived hidden as a ‘mole’ in the cellar of the family home. He wanted his sisters to avoid the same fate as his brother Arsenio. Before dying of a lung disease, he dug his own grave in the cellar and built a wooden coffin for his body. His father committed suicide. Claudio’s body was exhumed in 2014 after the death of his sister Manuela, who had kept the family tragedy a secret all her life.
Antiguo Cementerio del Carmen, Ponferrada, León. (2016)
Two men (Antonio Fernández Guerrero, 25, and José Canedo Fernández, 26) from the locality of Quilós, were shot here in front of the cemetery wall on 21 May 1942 and buried in a common grave. The cemetery was closed in 1965, and some graves relocated. But the common grave is probably still there and it is believed that it could hold the remains of 200 others, including 18 miners executed by the Guardia Civil in 1936 and the body of the legendary guerrilla fighter Manuel Girón, who died in 1951.
Montearenas (A-6 motorway), Ponferrada, León. (2016)
The construction of the A-6 motorway, and the expansion of the National-VI and an industrial estate entailed the loss of several mass graves. Human remains are often found during major engineering works, and operators are under pressure to cover them up so that the construction work is not stopped. There are 60 documented murders in the Montearenas area, but there may be more than 200. One victim was Bernabé González Cañas, 29, who was shot and buried in a mass grave on 20 September 1937.
La Retuerta I (Bend of Death), Villagatón, León. (2016)
Seven people were murdered on 4 August 1936 at this bend on the old highway from A Coruña to Madrid. Detained in Ponferrada in the first days of the military uprising, the seven prisoners were told that they were going to be transferred to León. They never arrived. The vehicle transporting them stopped shortly before arriving at the Alto del Manzanal near the bend of La Retuerta, where they were shot.
La Retuerta II (Bend of Death), Villagatón, León. (2016)
The bodies of the seven, murdered on 4 August 1936, who included José Gallego Redondo, 23, a footballer with the Ponferradina Sports Club, were thrown to the bottom of the valley. The other victims were Jerónimo Álvarez Pacios, 28, Ramón Fernández Pérez, 25, Eliseo Cobo Gómez, 32, José Monje Hernández, 25, Florencio González Cañueto and Ramiro Llaguno Gutiérrez.
Cementerio de Nuestra Señora del Carmen, Valladolid. (2016)
Forty-two bodies have been recovered from the spot cordoned off by red and white tape. One body, of a man aged 55 to 60, had bullet holes in the leg and thorax. A newspaper clipping dated 6 August 1936 with a list of agricultural prices and a report on the Tour de France was found in his decomposed jacket. It is believed that the cemetery may contain more than 1,000 missing persons in up to ten mass graves. So far 228 bodies have been recovered from four graves.
Montes de Torozos II, Valladolid. (2016)
From 1936 to 1939, this grove of oak trees was the site of hundreds of executions. Victims were picked up in nearby towns, transported in trucks, vans or requisitioned cars to the oak wood and shot. Later they were buried in common graves in the vicinity, dug by the victims themselves or by workers from nearby farms, who were taken from their homes for this purpose.
Montes de Torozos I, Valladolid. (2016)
This monument to the victims of the Franco regime has been vandalised several times in the past. It marks the point where patrols used to halt municipal buses going to and from Valladolid, from 1936 to 1939. Passengers were able to see the vans loaded with prisoners, and once even witnessed dead bodies on the road. In 2013, a section of the new highway linking Valladolid and León was inaugurated. The engineering works came very close to the area of the mass graves.
Raïmats, La Fatarella, Tarragona. (2016)
The body of an Italian member of the 35th division of the International Brigades was found in this trench on the Ebro front. He died just before 4 pm on the last day of the Battle of the Ebro, 15 November 1938. He stuck to his post until the end to give his comrades a chance to retire. The earth is strewn with thousands of corpses. Due to the installation of wind farms in the area, human remains are found on a regular basis.
Monte Ezcaba (Fuerte de San Cristóbal), Navarra. (2017)
On 22 May 1938, there was a mass break out, mainly of Republicans, from the prison at Fort San Cristóbal. Some 207 of the 795 prisoners involved were recaptured and killed as they tried to escape over the mountains to France. Only three managed to cross the French border. Today, the fort and its surroundings contain the bodies of the shot fugitives, as well as an indeterminate number of unregistered prisoners taken out and shot by Falangists and about 400 prisoners who were left to die of starvation. In 2009, an adjacent grave was excavated and the bodies of 131 prisoners who had died of tuberculosis were found. A bottle containing an identification document had been placed between the legs of each the deceased, giving the site the name of ‘the cemetery of the bottles’.
La Modelo I (Cell 443), Barcelona. (2017)
The young anarchist Salvador Puig Antich, 25, spent his last night in cell 443 of the La Modelo prison in Barcelona, 1-2 March 1974. He had been sentenced to death for killing the 24-year-old police officer, Francisco Anguas Barragán, on 25 September 1973 after he was ambushed in a bar and a shoot-out followed. His four sisters are still fighting to have his case reviewed, challenging the irregularities of the legal process under Franco.
La Modelo II (Parcel Office), Barcelona. (2017)
Salvador Puig Antich was executed in this office on 2 March 1974 by the official executioner of the High Court of Madrid, Antonio López Sierra. His execution by garrotte, an agonising medieval method (banned in 1978), began at 9.20 am and his death was certified by a medical officer 20 minutes later.
Campo de la Bota II (Parque del Fórum), Barcelona. (2017)
Carme Claramunt Bonet, 41, was the first woman to be shot here, at dawn of 23 April 1939. In the following months ten more women held in the Cortes prison (Eugenia González Ramos, 20, Neus Bouza Gil, 22, Cristina Fernández Perera, 39, Ramona Peralba Sala, 35, Dolors Giorla Laribal, 27, Magdalena Nolla Montseny, 34, Elionor Malich Salvador, 60, Virginia Amposta, 50, Asumpciò Puigdelloses Vila, 43, and Inés Giménez Lumbreras, 24), were also executed.
Campo de la Bota III (Parc del Fòrum), Barcelona. (2017)
Forty-four soldiers who had taken part in the military coup were shot here by the Republican authorities on 9-10 October 1936. The Campo de la Bota has disappeared as it was completely redeveloped and renamed for the construction of the Parc del Fòrum.
Campo de la Bota I (Parc del Fòrum), Barcelona. (2017)
Between 1939 and 1952, 1,717 people, 11 of them women, were shot at the Campo de la Bota by the Franco regime. They would be transferred from prisons in groups of 20 and executed by the Civil Guard in front of what was once a 40m long parapet on the beach, staining the sand red from their blood until it was washed away by the sea. The bodies would later be thrown into the Fossar de la Pedrera.
Fossar de la Pedrera (Montjuïc), Barcelona. (2017)
In the former quarry of the Fossar de la Pedrera there are human remains of the people killed by the anti-fascist militias, the victims of the events of May 1937, some 1,300 victims of the Francoist bombing of the city of Barcelona by Italian and German planes between 16 and 18 March 1938 and some 3,400 people executed by the Franco dictatorship between 1939 and 1952. They used to dump the bodies down a slide into a hole previously made by soldiers and cover them with quicklime.