Silvia Navarro, with the photograph of her relative Jose Antonio Marco Viedma, buried in the Valley of the Fallen. Víctor Sainz
When 88-year-old Mercedes Abril is asked how she is doing, she says, "I'm waiting."
"Ten years since I started moving it and before that, a lifetime."
By "move it," she means trying to retrieve her father's remains from her once she learned he had been moved to the Valley of the Fallen without family consent, like many other Republicans.
“All life” is from the age of three, when in September 1936 the Civil Guard took Rafael Abril, a socialist, head of the Clarés de Ribota station (Zaragoza), and that girl never saw him again.
She had denounced him to a priest, who accused him, among other things, of not having married in the church.
Eusebia, who was his wife, was then 27 years old and about to give birth.
The baby only lived 10 days.
She did have a long, but hard life.
“She died at 101 and the day before”,
remembers Mercedes, “he told me how much he would like the remains to be recovered.
I promised her I would do my best to bury my father with her.
And that's where I'm at."
The decision of the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid to lift the precautionary measures that have so far prevented trying to satisfy the last will of Eusebia and 103 other families, has made Mercedes “happy”, but she immediately adds: “I don't trust.
When I see it I'll believe it.
It's been many years and when it seems that it's going to be done, a problem always arises.
Now those who oppose exhumations say let's face the consequences.
I'm not afraid of threats, but I am afraid of time."
Purification Lapeña, with the portraits of her grandfather and great-uncle, both buried in the Valley of the Fallen.
Carlos Gil Roig
Manuel Lapeña, who in 2016 managed to get a ruling to recognize his right to recover the remains of his father and uncle from the Valley of the Fallen, time has run out.
He was 12 years old when they were taken away to be killed a few days apart and he died last September, at 97. At some point between those "problems" that Mercedes recounts and that have repeatedly delayed the exhumations in the crypts of the mausoleum Manuel lost his memory.
Her daughter Purification remembers that “when her head began to go”, she constantly repeated the last conversation she had had with her father.
“He told me: 'Your grandfather told me not to worry, that they weren't going to do anything to him because he hadn't done anything.
I went out to wait for him at the door of the house, but he never came back… ”.
Silvino Gil: “There is no one left.
Just me.
And that hurts"
Purificación would like to be able to bury them together, but, like Mercedes, she doesn't trust it.
“Some impediment always arises.
We've been doing this for 12 years."
They searched for Manuel and Rafael Lapeña through mass graves until, thanks to a historian, they discovered, to their horror, that the remains had been transferred to the Francoist monument.
Her husband, Miguel Ángel Capapé, president of the Association for the Recovery and Investigation Against Oblivion, ARICO, addresses those responsible for the latest delay, pro-Francoist and anti-memorialist associations that presented cascading appeals in the courts to prevent the exhumations: "We have twice visited the crypts accompanied by coroners.
In one of the burial levels we saw, the wooden boxes were rotten and the bones were mixed up.
They want to stop this for a political interest.
They don't care exactly how the remains are."
The plan of the Secretary of State for Democratic Memory provides, in addition to trying to identify the victims claimed by the families, to clean up the columbariums of the Valley of the Fallen, which today is the largest mass grave in Spain, with more than 33,800 buried, the equivalent to the city of Teruel.
Interior of one of the columbariums of level 1. The technicians point out that "no division between them" or identification data can be seen in the stacked bones. CSIC
Fausto Canales, 88, was one of the pioneers.
He recites in a rush all the steps he has been taking since 2007 to try to recover the remains of his father, Valerico, and his uncle, Victorino: the ruling of the National Court authorizing the exhumations in the Valley, that it was annulled;
the Argentine complaint against the crimes of Francoism;
the file of the European Court of Human Rights, Canales Bermejo against Spain… And then, the administrative route: when they granted him permission to recover his uncle, but not his father;
when they finally gave it to him;
when the Government approved the departure to intervene in the crypts and a cascade of judicial resources stopped it.
“It's been 20 years fighting.
Now there is political will, but also powerful forces trying to torpedo it.
I would say to those people that this is, above all,
a matter of humanity.
We are normal people asking for something normal: to bury our loved ones with dignity, wherever we want.
And I would tell them that my mother, Virgilia, was 30 years old when her husband was killed and that from then until she died, at 99, she was unable to talk about him without crying.
She never remarried."
Because of her and because he is convinced that his is "a just cause", never in all this time has he allowed himself to get discouraged from her.
"I prefer to think about those intimate, small triumphs that have been along the way and trust that this can be done before the right wing governs again."
she was unable to speak of him without crying.
She never remarried."
Because of her and because he is convinced that his is "a just cause", he has never allowed himself to lose heart in all this time.
"I prefer to think about those intimate, small triumphs that have been along the way and trust that this can be done before the right wing governs again."
she was unable to speak of him without crying.
She never remarried."
Because of her and because he is convinced that his is "a just cause", he has never allowed himself to lose heart in all this time.
"I prefer to think about those intimate, small triumphs that have been along the way and trust that this can be done before the right wing governs again."
Fausto Canales poses with the portraits of his father and uncle, both buried in the Valley of the Fallen.
Victor Sainz
Silvia Navarro: “I grew up in Germany and something like that is inconceivable there.
No one would argue with this."
Because they are no longer only concerned with biological times, but also with political ones.
Silvia Navarro, president of the Association of Relatives for the Exhumation of the Republicans buried in the Valley, and grandniece of one of them, José Antonio Marco Viedma, recalls that in 2011 the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero presented the report of the Committee of Experts over the Valley when he had already lost the elections.
“Mariano Rajoy put it in a drawer and if this continues to be delayed and the PP wins, we can return to the same place.
It shouldn't be a left or right issue though.
I grew up in Germany and something like this is inconceivable there, no one would dispute this.
When he received us, the president of National Heritage during the Rajoy Government, José Rodríguez-Spiteri,
He told us that he perfectly understood our claims and that it had been studied that the traumas of a civil war last five generations.
To those who oppose it, I would say to loosen up.
There are relatives who can't take it anymore.
What less than a 100-year-old man, who is the one who has one of the children of the Cansado brothers, can recover what is left of his father.
They had very hard childhoods, marked all their lives.
This waiting is psychological torture.
Why do you want to prolong it?
This waiting is psychological torture.
Why do you want to prolong it?
This waiting is psychological torture.
Why do you want to prolong it?
"We are in a hurry," insists Silvino Gil, 86, who claims the remains of his father.
“They should have done it before, when there were still more of their family and friends alive.
Now there is no one left, only me.
And that hurts".
The lawyer Eduardo Ranz, who obtained the favorable sentence for the Lapeña family six years ago, regrets that it has not yet been fulfilled.
He celebrates the latest order of the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid and urges "not to waste any more time".
“Precautionary measures are usually resolved in 15 or 20 days and in this case they have taken eight months.
That last car gives families hope.
We hope that it will be resolved as soon as possible in order to close a wound that has been bleeding for 80 years.”
Lawyer Eduardo Ranz poses with documentation related to the Valley of the Fallen case.
Victor Sainz
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