Javier Pérez, an anthropologist from the AMEDE association, shows Alberto and Dionisia's rings in the autopsy room where the remains and belongings of the exhumed are deposited, in San Fernando, Cádiz. Juan Carlos Toro
The 108 black drawers painted with tracing letters take up all the space available on the white tile walls.
The box of subject 303 is the only one that rests on a table in the old morgue of the San Fernando cemetery (Cádiz).
Inside, a skull with a bullet hole protruding leaves little room for doubt about the cause of death.
And next to it, an airtight bag contains two oxidized rings on which you barely read 'Alberto' and 'Dionisia'.
In the absence of a DNA test to confirm it, individual 303 is no longer a reprisal of the Franco regime without a name, buried in a Cadiz mass grave with 228 more shot.
It is Alberto García Martínez, a victim of the dictatorship rescued from anonymity for love.
The few vital data that were known about this Cartagena man murdered on June 18, 1940 fell into place when the archaeologists of the Amede de San Fernando memorialist association found the two alliances in the grave a few months ago, still attached to the index finger of your owner.
García was on the list of reprisals buried in four graves in the cemetery where there are military personnel assigned to the island barracks, politicians, teachers and even evangelical pastors.
García Martínez was 43 years old, he was a fire corporal on the military destroyer ship
Almirante Valdés
, which remained faithful to the Republic and left two children, 17 months and nine years old, and a widow, Dionisia.
A letter from the investigating judge José Sánchez addressed to the mayor of San Fernando ordered to execute him at 6 in the morning next to the wall of the municipal cemetery "for the crime of rebellion", tried in 1939 in case 387, according to an official document obtained by Amede.
For now, little else is known about Alberto García, but it is already a lot.
"The usual thing is that we don't even know who he is and we have to wait for DNA checks with his living relatives," explains Javier Pérez Guirao, anthropologist and president of the entity.
Since Amede began to work in the San Fernando grave, he has already had 108 corpses of reprisals recovered, of the 229 that are believed to have been murdered between 1936 and 1941, all buried in four mass graves in which they are seen with deaths by other causes.
None have been identified so far, despite the fact that there are up to 40 families eager for the DNA tests being carried out by the University of Granada to end the anonymity imposed on those cold location numbers that today pray on their boxes.
Alberto García's was not one of them.
The case of their alliances has gone viral after Amede launched a public call to find their living relatives to whom they can offer the possibility of a DNA test that confirms the identity of the victim.
The ad, in addition to going viral, served;
and Pérez has managed to find one of his grandchildren in Murcia who, for now, digests the finding in silence.
“The family was not looking for him and they have found him.
They are processing it.
You have to give them their time, they have been too many years of imposed silence, ”explains Pérez, hoping that the descendants will be encouraged to take the step.
The stoker is one of the four murdered Murcians who rested in pits whose excavation is not being easy, since it began almost five years ago.
The very origin of the reprisals is already a problem, since 106 were soldiers from other parts of Spain such as Galicia, which makes it difficult to locate the relatives.
The lack of a more complete record of the burials, the mixture with more than 400 corpses of non-reprisals or the difficulty in accessing public subsidies to continue the work are some of the obstacles that undermine the dedication of the five technicians who work the grave .
Yet they do not give up their effort.
"Although we know that judicially it is difficult to do something, we invest a lot of time in making a complete archaeological and anthropological study of each subject," explains archaeologist Jorge Juan Cepillo, during a break during the excavation.
Ángeles Fernández Roldán has been waiting for years for the call that Alberto García's grandson has received.
He hopes to find the remains of his grandfather, Cayetano Roldán, the socialist mayor and doctor of San Fernando who was murdered in October 1936 and buried in one of those graves.
Fernández's family has not yet overcome the "bump" that meant they did not obtain conclusive DNA evidence that would allow the identification of the remains of three of his uncles, Cayetano's children, shot and buried in a grave in Puerto Real that was already excavated.
“When they went to shoot my grandfather, he told the executioner to, at least, forgive his children.
And he answered that they were already dead, ”recalls the woman in a telephone conversation from Madrid, where she lives.
LIST OF PEOPLE REPRESSED BY THE FRANCOISM LINKED TO SAN FERNANDO (CÁDIZ) BETWEEN 1936 AND 1941. Prepared by ...
Posted by AMEDE San Fernando on Monday, February 15, 2021
The case of Cayetano Roldán and his three sons, all murdered by the coup plotters, impacted Pérez in such a way that it prompted him to create Amede with the intention of digging the graves in which there are still months of work.
The anthropologist hopes that the dissemination of the case of the rings will attract more family members to check whether any of the 229 names of the reprisals who have published on their social networks correspond to any of their ancestors.
Or, for those who are already looking for it, that they are able to dig into the memories and anecdotes heard at home of whether their loved one carried a characteristic object that limits the search.
“We have found glasses, coins, pipes, keys, cigarette papers and even a military jacket.
We have also located a very personal object, from a family tradition, which may lead us to identify another person ”, explains Pérez.
Fernández is not able to know that detail, but he does not lose hope that genetic tests this time will work, although the comparison is more complex than when efforts are focused on a single individual.
“The sad thing is that silence has been imposed.
I've seen my mother who died, who hardly told us about it.
I have been searching for many years and I am 72 years old.
I hardly leave home because I don't want something to happen to me [due to the coronavirus] and fail my grandfather, ”the excited woman said.
Ángeles García does not want to die without having recovered the dignity and identity that an executioner took from Cayetano Roldán 85 years ago.