ABSTRACT
This contribution will focus on the ongoing exhumation of mass graves from the Spanish Civil War. The graves in question contain Republican civilians killed by Nationalist soldiers or militias between 1936 and 1939. The exhumations are part of a broader campaign to acknowledge Republican memory of the civil war and the Left’s experience of repression under Franco, still an absolute taboo in many communities in Spain. The exhumation work began in earnest in 2000, 25 years after the death of Franco, and is coordinated by a national network of activists, sympathisers, and relatives of those who suffered in the war or subsequent repression. An oft-cited estimate is of 30,000 civilian victims still remaining in mass graves throughout Spain. Since the Nationalists’s victory enabled them to mourn and memorialise their own losses, the vast majority of these graves are Republican, a label encompassing a broad spectrum of left-wing politics.
