2011

This book examines the contested representations of those murdered during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s in two small rural communities as they undergo the experience of exhumation, identification, and reburial from nearby mass graves. Based on interviews with relatives of the dead, community members and forensic archaeologists, it pays close attention to the role of excavated objects and images in breaking the pact of silence that surrounded the memory of these painful events for decades afterward. It also assesses the significance of archaeological and forensic practices in changing relationships between the living and dead. The exposure of graves has opened up a discursive space in Spanish society for multiple representations to be made of the war dead and of Spain’s traumatic past.

Journal of Material Culture, 2020

The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) was triggered by a military uprising against the democratically elected Popular Front government. Away from the battlefield, this war was characterized by the politically-motivated murder of thousands of civilians, many of whom were buried in clandestine graves throughout Spain. Following Franco’s victory and subsequent dictatorship, there were strong prohibitions on commemorating the Republican dead. A radical rupture in Spain’s memory politics occurred from 2000 onwards with the founding of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory and other similar pressure groups that have organized the exhumation and reburial of the Republican dead. This article is based on fieldwork conducted in communities in Castile and León, and Extremadura as they underwent mass grave investigations. It examines the experience of theft and dispossession that occurred as part of the Francoist repression of Republicans. Accounts of these episodes focus on stolen ...

Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 2008

In this paper, I will reflect on the impact in contemporary Spain of the production, circulation and consumption of narratives and images of Civil War terror and suffering, specifically those resulting from the opening of mass graves from the Francoist repression. This sharing of narratives has to be seen in the context of a broader and highly controversial process of reconsideration of the Civil War as a traumatic past. At a time when Spanish society is engaged in important debates regarding the singularity or plurality of our identity and the structure of our territorial organization, these exhumations are bringing to light rather disturbing information regarding our past, our present, and probably our future as well. The excavation of these “crime scenes” in various parts of the country is provoking heated discussions and performances in family contexts, politics, historiography, the media, the arts, and the public sphere in general. For example, the public display of skeletons, skulls and bone fragments bearing the marks of violence – from “perimortem” tortures to bullet wounds and coups de grâce – is bringing back tragic stories that, for many relatives but also for civil society at large, were for decades mostly silenced, told in whispers, imperfectly transmitted in limited family circles, or simply ignored. The screen of silence, fear and self-censorship has been particularly strong in local, rural contexts. Exhumation and narration are inextricably entwined. Exhumations elicit storytelling; conversely, their meaning and social impact depend on the available repertoire of competing “memory plots".

Anthropology today, 2006

Mass graves resulting from episodes of extreme violence are crucial evidence of the wounds of history, and a key to understanding the dynamics of terror. The intentional jumbling of unidentified corpses in unmarked graves is a source of disorder, anxiety and division in many societies (Robben 2000). As a sophisticated instrument of terror, this type of grave is intended to bury the social memory of violence and thus to strengthen the fear-based regimes of the perpetrators, which can survive for decades. Yet as social and political circumstances evolve, social memory eventually returns to confront these unquiet graves. Events of recent decades in countries such as Argentina, Guatemala,Spain and Rwanda show us precisely this. What happens as a result of these return visits, often involving exhumations, depends on the national and international contexts in which the remains are found, investigated and manipulated(Verdery 1999). This paper explores the contemporary controversies around the exhumation of Civil War (1936-1939) mass graves in Spain, as well as the ethnographic challenges posed by them.

P. Cornish and N.J. Saunders (eds.): Bodies in Conflict: Corporeality, Materiality, and Transformation. London: Routledge, 2013

The aim of this chapter is twofold: firstly, I will outline the economy of punishment inflicted on the vanquished, and particularly to the bodies of the vanquished, during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and post-war period. Many of those who fell into the hands of the rebel army or paramilitary militias were tortured, killed and their bodies buried in unmarked graves. Others suffered all kinds of deprivations in concentration camps and prisons. In the second part, I will describe how the corporeality of the vanquished has been kept alive in different ways until recent exhumations started to expose the bodies again.

European Review, 21, 4, 507-522, 2013

Archaeologies. Journal of the World Archaeology Congress, 4(3): 429-444, 2008

The recovery of historic memory of the Spanish Civil War is a multilayered initiative to escape both the romanticism of the Franco era, in which only the glory of the victors was celebrated while their past atrocities were ignored, and the cautiousness of the post-Franco democracy, for which forced amnesia of the Civil War was considered a sacrifice for the greater good. In the past five years the efforts to recover historic memory have gained empirical footing by employing archaeological methods to locate, enumerate and identify the victims of extrajudicial executions. The ultimate goals of such work include the production of a more accurate historical statement of past events, the repatriation of missing persons to their families, and the documentation of physical evidence that may allow families to seek civil restitutions. While the scientific methodology is fairly straightforward, the process is nonetheless inherently political in that various government bodies can and do impede recovery efforts. This paper contextualizes the current political and social climate of human rights investigations in Spain by illustrating some of the recent recovery efforts in Catalonia and Andalucia. Le rétablissement de la mémoire historique concernant la guerre civile espagnole est une initiative à plusieurs niveaux pour échapper au romantisme de l’ère franquiste, dans laquelle seule la gloire des vainqueurs était célébrée, tandis que leurs exactions criminelles étaient passées sous silence. La prudence de la démocratie postfranquiste forçait l’amnésie de la guerre civile tout en la considérant comme un sacrifice nécessaire au bien de tous. Au cours de ces cinq dernières années, les efforts déployés pour rétablir la mémoire historique a empiriquement gagné du terrain de façon par l’emploi de méthodes archéologiques destinées à localiser, faire le compte et identifier les victimes d’exécutions extrajudiciaires. Les objectifs ultimes d’un tel travail comprennent la production d’une mémoire historique plus précise des événements passés, la restitution des personnes disparues à leurs familles, et la documentation de preuves physiques qui peuvent conduire les familles à entamer des poursuites judiciaires en vue d’obtenir des compensations. Tandis que la méthodologie scientifique est assez simple et directe, le processus est malgré tout politique par nature et sujet aux divers corps gouvernementaux qui peuvent entraver les efforts déployés. Cet article contextualise la politique et le climat social actuels des enquêtes sur les droits humanitaires en Espagne, en illustrant les efforts récents de rétablissement de la mémoire historique en Catalogne et en Andalousie. La recuperación de la memoria histórica de la Guerra Civil Española es una iniciativa de varios niveles con la que se persigue escapar tanto del romanticismo de la era franquista, en la que sólo se celebraba la gloria de los vencedores ocultando las atrocidades del pasado, y la prudencia de la democracia posterior a Franco, que consideraba la amnesia sobre lo relacionado con la Guerra Civil un sacrificio necesario para disfrutar de más prosperidad. En los últimos cinco años, los esfuerzos para recuperar la memoria histórica han ganado fundamento empírico con el empleo de métodos arqueológicos que permiten localizar, enumerar e identificar las víctimas de las ejecuciones extrajudiciales. El fin último de este trabajo es la recuperación de unos hechos históricos más precisos del pasado, la repatriación de los desaparecidos a sus familias y la documentación de las pruebas físicas que pueden permitir a las familias solicitar restituciones civiles. Aunque el método científico es bastante sencillo, el proceso es sin embargo político en esencia, en el sentido de que los distintos organismos gubernamentales puede constituir un obstáculo a los esfuerzos de recuperación y de hecho, lo hacen. Este trabajo presenta el clima político y social de las investigaciones actuales sobre derechos humanos en España, poniendo como ejemplo algunos de los trabajos recientes de recuperación en Cataluña y Andalucía.

An Anthropology of Absence, 2010

Chapter 3 Missing Bodies Near-at-Hand: The Dissonant Memory and Dormant Graves of the Spanish Civil War Layla Renshaw Introduction This contribution will look at the case of Spain's mass graves containing the remains of tens of thousands of civilians killed by the ...

J. Almansa (ed.). 2010. Recorriendo la memoria - Touring Memory. BAR International Series 2168. Archaeopress 2168. Pp 49-55. ISBN: 978-1-403-0712-1

Based on 17 months of ethnographic field work on the current exhumation of mass graves from the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and subsequent Francisco Franco dictatorship (1939-1975), the dissertation examines the practice of exhuming as a death ritual animated by emotions. A large wealth of literature on the anthropology of death centers on funerary rituals as a way to reveal a people’s social structures and cultural meanings. Yet what happens when the living are denied from performing the rituals surrounding death? What happens to those dead, such as Spanish Republicans killed and left in mass graves, who escape the boundaries of ritual? Never before have Republicans been recognized as victims worthy of reburial until 2000 when a team of experts conducted the first professional exhumation of a Republican mass grave. While the rituals associated with exhuming have had an important impact on Spanish society in that it promises recognition and reburial to Republicans, the Spanish exhumations also project a perspective of the recent past as being resolved through the creation of Republican victims. Underlying the exhumations is the use of the dead body to narrate a particular version of the Spanish past through exhumation practice and ritual. The conditions under which exhuming produces new hierarchies of knowledge via its evaluation of the dead is driven not just by practice, but also emotion. Such feelings of love and loss ultimately determine which remains are excavated (i.e., Republicans), and which are not (i.e., Moroccans and Nationalists). In my ethnography on the Spanish experience of death rituals and emotions, I examine the microcosm of exhumations in relation to a larger framework that situates: (1) exhumation practice as a tool to provide meaning of the violent past in post-dictatorship Spain, and (2) the use of such practices to create knowledge in the aftermath of conflict worldwide. The dissertation concludes with possibilities for understanding how emotions and interests drive the production of knowledge that is more open to personal ways of knowing—an invitation for a critical medical anthropology and science studies approach to exhumation practices.