On July 19, 1936, one day after Francisco Franco's coup d'état, a group of 68 miners from the Huelva mining basin headed for Seville with a load of explosive material to help the Seville square contain the offensive led by by General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano.
At the entrance to the capital, at the height of La Pañoleta (Camas, Seville) they were to be joined by civil guards, theoretically loyal to the Second Republic.
They were unaware that they had conspired to go over to the other side and, as soon as they saw them arrive, they fired at them.
There they ended the lives of nine miners.
The rest were arrested and waited for the mining basin to be taken, on August 26 of that year, to be shot five days later.
Their bodies were thrown into the common grave of Pico Reja in the Sevillian cemetery of San Fernando, which first the Francoist side and then the dictatorship turned into a dumping ground for the corpses of victims of reprisals.
This Thursday, the Aranzadi technical team that works on the exhumation of these improvised graves has confirmed that at least thirty of the remains found belong to the members of that Mining Column.
The characteristics of some of these burials ―bodies without coffins, grouped and face down― and the evidence that they had been retaliated against ―shots in the neck, bullet impacts, signs of having been tied up,
perimortem
fractures― allowed forensic anthropologists to outline the hypothesis that they could be members of the Mining Column.
If it was really the miners who were shot, traces of the heavy metals they inhaled, touched, drank and swallowed in each of the days they spent working in the mines of Ríotinto and Nerva (Huelva) should remain in their bones.
Analytical tests carried out at the University of Santiago de Compostela on the bone remains have confirmed this.
Bone remains belonging to the Nerva mining column, found in the Pico Reja mass grave, in the San Fernando cemetery, in Seville. PACO PUENTES
Miguel Guerrero trusts that one of those lacerated bodies is that of his grandfather Miguel Guerrero Larios.
"He was 41 years old when he went to Seville," he explains.
The recreation of what could have happened to him from the time he was arrested on July 19 until he was shot to death on August 31 is based on the few known written accounts.
“My father was 14 years old and my aunt was eight.
They hardly told us about the war,” he explains.
What happened to the Mining Column is one of the least clear episodes of the Civil War in the province of Seville.
Treason
“The column was formed between the afternoon of July 18 and the morning of the 19. The director general of the Civil Guard ordered Commander Haro to meet with the miners at the entrance to Seville to accompany them in the defense of the capital. .
But he betrayed the orders”, tells the historian Alfredo Moreno.
Those who were arrested were transferred from the provincial prison to the
Cabo Capoeiro ship,
which was anchored in the Guadalquivir River, and which operated as a kind of floating prison after the coup.
"Its first tenants were the miners," says Moreno.
"There were people from the towns who did manage to pass letters, in my family, no," says Guerrero.
Although confusing, the story of his grandfather is known.
But in his family there are other much less clear episodes of repression.
“My grandfather's younger brother, on August 26, when the Queipo troops took the mining basin, they arrested him.
My family says that they saw him leave days later looking as if he had been tortured.
We have never heard from him again,” he explains.
He hopes that he will be found among the bodies in the mass graves of Nerva and Ríotinto.
“I am in person with my DNA and also that of my aunt in that exhumation procedure, just like in the Pico Reja one.
Almost 90 years later, it is very difficult for genetic material to remain in the bone remains that could be of any use, but you never know”, he says.
Guerrero has attended as a guest at the event that the Seville City Council has organized this Thursday in Pico Reja to publicize the discovery, although he did not know that it was going to focus on the Mining Column.
José Pedro Fernández has found out through the phone call from this newspaper.
His maternal grandfather, Francisco Iglesias, joined almost without thinking about it.
“On July 19 he was in the casino with other miners and the union comrades arrived and told them that they had requisitioned vehicles to go to Seville.
He got on one and my paternal grandfather, who saw that he was a little drunk, lowered it, but he got back on”, he explains.
He doesn't know anything else.
Her mother was three years old at the time and a year later she was orphaned and entered an orphanage in Ayamonte.
“All I know is from my paternal grandfather,” she points out.
Fernandez wants to go give a DNA sample in case he could help identify his grandfather.
He, like Juan José Rionegro, a resident of Riotinto and nephew of Manuel Rionegro, another columnist.
“I was the youngest in the house, I only knew that we had an uncle who had died in the war.
If I could identify it, it would come full circle,” he explains.
Skull and skeleton of one of the members of the Mining Column.
The signs of violence and the remains of heavy metals inhaled in the mines have been decisive in concluding that the remains belonged to the miners shot on August 31, 1936 by the rebel troops of Queipo de Llano in Seville. PACO PUENTES
In the Pico Reja pit, a wall of memory has been installed where the relatives of victims who could be buried there have put their images.
The photographs are an incentive for the members of the technical team that works in the cemetery to continue with their exhumation tasks. PACO PUENTES
The color scanning technique allows forensic archaeologists to identify the remains of corpses and their location.PACO PUENTES
Seville/06-02-2022: Bone remains belonging to the Nerva mining column found in the 'Pico Reja' mass grave, in the San Fernando cemetery, Seville.PHOTO: PACO PUENTES/EL PAISPACO PUENTES
Remains of a foot and the sole of a shoe belonging to one of the members of the Mining Column, which on July 19, 1936 left the Huelva mining basin to defend Seville after the coup. PACO PUENTES
View of the remains of one of the corpses of the miners of the Mining Column.
After an exhaustive study of how it was found, lacerations, signs of torture, etc., a DNA sample is taken to compare it with that of relatives and it is kept in a warehouse in the San Fernando cemetery, in Seville. PACO PUENTES
A crucifix next to one of the remains belonging to the members of the Mining Column who were thrown into the Pico Reja pit, after being shot in August 1936. The objects are usually one of the key elements to be able to identify the victims. PACO BRIDGES
The Pico Reja pit is the largest of the Franco regime that is currently being worked on.
5,000 bodies have been found, of which more than 1,000 have signs of having been reprisals. PACO PUENTES
The verification that thirty of the bodies found in Pico Reja belong to members of the Mining Column is a historic finding that, as the mayor of Seville, Antonio Muñoz, has emphasized, will shed light on one of the most tragic episodes in Seville.
Unfortunately, not all of the 1,095 remains of people with obvious signs of having been retaliated against and who were thrown into the pit have evidence as clear as the traces of heavy metals characteristic of the Huelva mines that allow such an apparently direct identification.
The Seville grave is the largest of the Franco regime in which work is currently being carried out.
In its 671.34 meters long and four meters deep, more than 5,000 bodies have been found, of which 4,944 have been exhumed.
“I hope my grandfather is close by.
He disappeared two days before the group of miners, ”says Lourdes Farratell, one of the many family members who seek answers in that abyss of shame, but also of hope.
Exclusive content for subscribers
read without limits
subscribe
I'm already a subscriber