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Spain’s election raises concerns over fate of Franco victim exhumations

There are fears that the pace of exhumations of victims of the 1936-39 civil war and the dictatorship of Francisco Franco that followed could slow down if the right wins Spain's July 23rd snap election, as polls suggest.

Published: 14 July 2023 12:06 CEST

Spain's election raises concerns over fate of Franco victim exhumations

A picture of Secretary of the Baza City Council, Diego Machado Granados executed between 1936 and 1939 during the Spanish Civil War is put on display on a tree in Viznar, near Granada. Photo: Jorge Guerrero/AFP

In southern Spain, a team of archaeologists is racing to search for the remains of some 200 people executed by firing squad at the start of the Spanish Civil War.

Between July and December 1936, the Víznar ravine just outside the southern city of Granada was used “as a place for executions”, explains Francisco Carrión, an archaeologist from the University of Granada who is in charge of the exhumation project.

Among those killed there by Franco’s nationalist forces were intellectuals, factory workers, teachers and Spain’s most prominent 20th-century poet Federico García Lorca who wrote “Blood Wedding”.

Like the others, Lorca was shot for his suspected leftist sympathies by backers of a military uprising against the elected republican government.

As he sieves earth from the mass grave, archaeologist Rafael Cid says working there is much more “intense and personal” than working on a prehistoric site.

Among the remains are also personal effects like gold teeth, lighters, rings, earrings and spectacles.

Most of the victims’ immediate family members have died, leaving very few left alive, giving the dig an even greater sense of urgency.

Under a democratic memory law passed in 2022, Spain’s government is now responsible for identifying victims buried in unmarked graves. Photo: Jorge Guerrero/AFP

Campaigners say the remains of more than 100,000 victims were left in unmarked graves across Spain, a figure Amnesty International says is only exceeded by Cambodia.

But Spaniards remain deeply divided over this dark period of their history, with a plaque describing Víznar as a “place of historical memory” defaced by graffiti.

On one part, someone has crossed out “lost their lives” and replaced with “were assassinated” while elsewhere, someone has scrawled: “¡Viva Franco!” – “Long live Franco!”

Since coming to power in 2018, Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has made honouring Franco’s victims a priority, with a democratic memory law taking effect in October 2022 that makes the state responsible for identifying victims buried in unmarked graves.

Until then, efforts to find and identify victims were were mainly run by self-funded volunteer associations.

The law has meant more public funding for projects like the one at Víznar.

But Alberto Núñez Feijóo, head of the right-wing opposition Popular Party (PP) which is leading in the polls, has vowed to repeal the law if elected premier.

Both the PP and the far-right party Vox — its potential coalition partner — say the law needlessly reopens wounds of the past.

It’s an argument quickly dismissed by Carrión.

“It’s a question of human rights, plain and simple,” he said.

In October 2019, Sánchez’s government exhumed Franco’s remains from a grandiose complex near Madrid, reburying them in a more discrete grave.

Once known as Valley of the Fallen but now referred to as Cuelgamuros Valley, the site is Spain’s largest mass grave and was partly built by the forced labour of political prisoners.

There lie the bodies of more than 30,000 people from both sides of the civil war, their remains moved there in 1959 from cemeteries and mass graves across Spain without their relatives’ knowledge.

An archaeologist cleans the remains of a body executed between 1936 and 1939 during the Spanish Civil War. (Photo by JORGE GUERRERO / AFP)

Among them is Silvia Navarro’s great-uncle, a leftist businessman who was executed in 1936. His family has searched for his remains for years.

Navarro said her great-uncle was buried in a mass grave in the northeastern town of Calatayud with “200 others who were killed in similar conditions” with his remains later moved to the Valley of the Fallen “without anyone being consulted”.

“I think we families will once again have to fight a lot” to recover loved ones’ remains if the PP and Vox come to power, said Navarro.

But Julio del Olmo, head of the Valladolid branch of Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory which has spent two decades exhuming mass graves and campaigning for justice for Franco’s victims, is less concerned.

“Nobody is going to ban the exhumations, they didn’t do it before and it won’t happen now,” he said.

“What could change is the funding. If we have financial help, the work can be done within a month, if not, within five months,” he explains.

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Why regional elections in Catalonia matter to Spain's future

Sunday May 12th will see regional elections in Catalonia at a time when political uncertainty and unpredictability reigns not only in the northern region but across the country. As such, the results could, and likely will, have political ramifications at the national level, perhaps even on the stability of the government itself.

If you follow Spanish politics, you’ll have probably noticed that there’s been quite a lot going on recently. And even if you aren’t a semi-obsessive politico, Spanish politics has been so melodramatic, so unpredictable and (at times) so ridiculous, that in recent months it’s been hard to ignore.

In short: Socialist (PSOE) Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez made a pact with Catalan separatist parties to stay in power after last summer’s general election. Part of this was an amnesty law that granted a legal amnesty to people involved in the failed 2017 referendum independence bid, but it caused outrage across many parts of the country and led to weeks of protests, some of which were violent.

Though Sánchez faced a lot of public ire, Carles Puigdemont, the former President of Catalonia who is a fugitive from Spanish law, takes the brunt of the hatred, particularly from the Spanish right and far-right. Puigdemont is running again in the regional election on May 12th, and has already stated that he will leave politics if he isn’t re-elected.

More recently, Sánchez shocked the country by publishing a highly personal letter on Twitter/X, reportedly released without the advice of his advisors or cabinet colleagues, stating that he was taking five days out to consider his future following repeated attacks against his wife over alleged influence peddling. This came right before the Catalan campaign kicked off and essentially brought politics to a standstill and left the country in limbo.

Sánchez then disappeared from public life, shut himself away in his La Moncloa residence and considered his future, leaving the country in the midst of what felt like a telenovela – a soap opera. On Monday he announced he was staying on and attempted to use the decision as a pivot moment to reinvigorate his government, strengthen Spanish democracy, and to make a stand against what Sánchez describes as the far-right ‘mud machine’.

Others view things differently. While Sánchez supporters see the debacle as a brave affront to right-wing harassment and lawfare tactics used against him, critics have described it as farcical, manipulative, and opposition Partido Popular leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo said that Sánchez had “made a fool of himself” and embarrassed Spain on the global scene.

Many view the move as cynical electioneering, and Sánchez does indeed have a well deserved reputation as a somewhat machiavellian political maneuverer.

But how can Sánchez’s five day mini-sabbatical be electioneering if Spain had elections as recently as last summer? Here’s where the upcoming Catalan elections come in again.

Why regional elections in Catalonia matter to Spain’s future

In short: the results of the Catalan elections have the potential to disrupt the delicate power balance in Madrid.

Some context: in the Catalan regional government, pro-independence parties Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), Junts per Catalunya (Puigdemont’s party) and the smaller Candidatura d’Unitat Popular (CUP) have an absolute majority. This allowed separatist parties, namely ERC and Junts, greater political leverage when negotiating the amnesty with Sánchez and the PSOE last year.

Though some, particularly in Junts, would like the amnesty (which is still yet to be approved in the Senate) to go further, the national government has more or less survived since the summer based on this uneasy truce. Depending on the results in Catalonia on May 12th, we may see just how fragile it really is.

Exiled Catalan separatist leader, MEP and founder of the Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia) party Carles Puigdemont gives a speech during a meeting to present his list for the upcoming regional elections in Catalonia, in Elna, southwestern France. (Photo by Matthieu RONDEL / AFP)

What do the polls say? Most seem to have the PSC (the PSOE’s sister party in Catalonia) making big gains and becoming the biggest party in the Generalitat, with leader Salvador Illa becoming President. According to RTVE’s average of polls, the PSC is on course to win 39 seats, six more than in 2021. Junts is projected to be in second place with 32 seats and would thus overtake ERC, which would get 28, a loss of 5 seats, though some polls put ERC in second and Junts third.

However, no poll gives the PSC an absolute majority of 68 seats needed to govern alone. As such, the PSC, should it win, will require the votes of far-left Comuns-Sumar, but also a coalition arrangement with a pro-independence party, most likely ERC.

However, polling from El Nacional, a Catalan newspaper, estimates that undecided voters still make up a third (33.5 percent) of the Catalan electorate, so there will likely be some variation from polling data to the results on election day.

Interestingly, Sánchez’s five day reflection period seems to have actually boosted PSOE polling numbers overall on a national level. According to a flash poll taken following the letter, the PSOE vote intention surged.

But the move has not proven popular with politicians in Catalonia, particularly among the pro-independence parties Sánchez’s government relies on in Madrid. The current President of the Generalitat and ERC candidate Pere Aragonès accused Sánchez of exploiting the “empathy” of the Spanish public “for an exclusively political purpose”, describing the “five day comedy” as “yet another electoral manoeuvre.”

The ERC has even made a complaint to Spain’s electoral authority about Sánchez’s decision and subsequent interview on Spanish state TV, claiming it could have breached electoral rules by favouring the PSOE candidacy in the Catalan election.

Junts general secretary Jordi Turull, meanwhile, has accused Sánchez of “interfering in the Catalan election.”

Remember, these are the parties that prop up the Sánchez government at the national level.

Protesters hold up a banner reading “Pedro (Sánchez), traitor” and “Spain is not for sale” during an anti-amnesty protest in Madrid. (Photo by Pierre-Philippe MARCOU / AFP)

Potential scenarios

So, it’s safe to say that things are tense in Spanish politics. Sánchez has angered a lot of people with his period of reflection — not only his opponents but also those who prop up his government in Congress. Conversely, the move does seem to have increased PSOE support overall ahead of polling day, and the PSC seems to be on course to win in Catalonia.

With no party likely to win an absolute majority, the Catalan results on May 12th will require coalitions, which could in turn have a ripple effect on alliances in Madrid. This is principally because there is a possibility that ERC or Junts could be left out of the Generalitat, which could remove the incentive for one (or even both, in the unlikely event of a PSC absolute majority) pro-independence parties to keep Sánchez in the Moncloa, or at the very least to demand more from him.

The polls suggest the most likely outcome is the PSC winning the elections but needing the support of ERC. At the national level, this could lead to a split in the separatist movement and would leave Junts’ support in Congress up in the air. Junts could theoretically withdraw its support, topple the government, and trigger further general elections.

Another scenario touted by political pundits is that pro-independence parties could again win an absolute majority between them. This would heap further political pressure on Sánchez, who, after already spending a lot of political capital on the amnesty law, would likely be pressured for further concessions from the Generalitat, namely another referendum but also changes to the amnesty law. Separatist parties would point to their victory, against polling predictions, as a mandate for pushing the pro-independence movement further.

Of course, there’s also the (admittedly unlikely) possibility that Junts per Catalunya win an absolute majority and Puigdemont becomes President of the region, something that would set the scene for his return to Spain and send shockwaves through Spanish politics.

Perhaps there is no better indication of how important this election is than the fact that Sánchez’s first public appearance since his ‘will he, won’t he’ resignation stunt was at the Fería de Barcelona.

Whatever happens in Catalonia on May 12th, two things seem certain: firstly, that people from across the country will be tuning in for the results; and secondly, as the last few years have shown, predictions are essentially useless and anything can happen in Spanish politics.

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