Paco Roca breaks the limits of comics with the mass graves of Franco's regime

Exclusive illustration for 'Babelia', adapted from the comic El abismo del olvido, with its protagonist, Pepica Celda, hugging her father José, retaliated by the Franco regime.PACO ROCA

It rains in Puçol.

It's cold.

It's four in the afternoon and Pepica Celda has spent the morning at home, with a cold.

She is already 92 years old, and she doesn't go out much.

She has installed the bed in the living room to make everything easier.

She opens the front door with a smile.

On the other side of her await Paco Roca and Rodrigo Terrasa, the authors of

El abismo del olvido

(Astiberri), the graphic novel that has turned her into a comic character.

To her, to her mother, to her sister.

To her father, shot in 1940 by the Franco regime.

To the undertaker of her father.

And to the archaeologists who helped her remove him a decade ago from the mass grave of the Paterna cemetery (Valencia) in which he was buried along with more than 200 people, the 126th. It is the largest in the Valencian Community.

They call it “the grave of the Earth” because the majority of those condemned to death who ended up there, murdered between August 27 and September 14, 1940, were farmers.

Like José Celda.

It is the first time that the authors have met the protagonist of their work since it was published.

She is tall, tall, with green eyes, notable for her recollection and an extraordinary memory. When she remembers the distant past, she sits on the couch in her living room with the comic in her hands, almost caressing it.

Paco Roca and Rodrigo Terrasa, authors of 'The Abyss of Oblivion', photographed in the Paterna cemetery (Valencia).

Monica Torres

—I've read it countless times already.

Sometimes the whole thing, sometimes just a glimpse.

There is not a day that I do not remember what is told here, can you believe it?

For me, getting my father out of that grave was very important.

He was buried badly.

Anyone who has not been through this does not know what it is like.

My father was everything to me.

A farmer, a good man who worked with his hands and who was shot without having done anything wrong.

And, on top of that, with the war already over.

I needed to bury him next to my mother, I needed him to be left alone.

That's why I worked so hard until I got it.

This has nothing to do with hatred or revenge.

It has to do with the fact that he was my father and my obligation was to give him a decent burial.

“Stories like this do not reopen past wounds,” says Roca.

“On the contrary, they close open wounds”

If each of Roca's works becomes a publishing phenomenon in the world of comics, with

El abismo del olvido

the author has broken his own ceiling and reached new audiences.

The book went on sale at the beginning of December.

The first edition, of 40,000 copies—an unusual circulation for a graphic novel in Spain—sold out in two months.

The second, of 15,000, is going at a good pace, according to data from the publisher, Astiberri.

The book has received the awards for best national work from the comic critics association and the Valencia Comic Fair, it is nominated by the Barcelona Comics Fair and for weeks it has been on the lists of best-selling non-fiction books of several media.

A milestone for a comic that is present in all large non-specialized bookstores.

The topic it addresses, that of the Franco regime's mass graves, is flammable material.

One of the ideological battles of the right is to end the historical memory laws and, after the regional and municipal electoral pacts between PP and Vox in 2023, they are beginning to materialize this.

In Aragon it has already happened.

But

The Abyss of Oblivion

barely borders on partisan politics.

Avoid that noise by focusing on Pepica Celda's personal story, which the authors make universal.

It is a work about the protection of memory and about the need, so human, ancestral and transversal to any ideology, to give a dignified burial to loved ones.

Pepica Celda, who fought to recover the remains of her father, and her character in the comic.MÒNICA TORRES / PACO ROCA AND RODRIGO TERRASA (ASTIBERRI)

“Stories like this do not reopen past wounds,” says Roca.

"On the contrary.

They close still open wounds.

Everyone has the right to search for their dead, regardless of their side.

And in Spain some have not been allowed.

We have been surprised that even readers who do not agree with the laws of historical memory have told us that they have been moved by the book.

I guess it's because they see everything up close, the human, the emotional part.

"What revenge can there be in wanting to bring flowers to your father?"

“We wanted the book to be understood anywhere in the world at any time and not limit it to the political conflict,” adds Terrasa, a journalist for

El Mundo

who had written about Celda in 2013, after the exhumation and identification of his father's bones. , and who had been convincing Roca for years to turn his story into a comic.

“Human beings need farewell rites, whether they are believers or not.

And when they don't have them, family members suffer and don't rest.

It is like when the body does not appear after a murder, as happened with Marta del Castillo or so many others.”

That is why the book even travels to the Iliad, to the deaths of Hector and Patroclus, to explain the desperation of not being able to bury a son, a friend.

The entrance to Pepica's house is presided over by her father's farewell letter, signed in the model prison of Valencia on September 13, 1940:

“So I hope you have all the harmony in the world, which is four days.

But I do tell you that I am completely innocent.

(...) I am writing to you because I can't take it anymore, because I have no more breath and because the fatal moment for me has arrived.

(…) Memory for your father, who does not forget you for a single moment.

Memories for my wife, may she remember her husband.

Goodbye forever your comfort.

Bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye.”

José Celda was a country man.

Affiliated with Izquierda Republicana—Manuel Azaña's party—but very little involved in politics.

His wife, Manuela, was much more active.

A communist, she sewed uniforms for Republican soldiers.

That's why they put her in jail before him, who was tried along with a handful of men from her town, Massamagrell, in a very summary trial without clear charges that ended with everyone sentenced to death.

They dressed his wife in mourning in prison two days before her execution, warning her that they were going to kill her husband.

“I remember those days perfectly,” explains Pepica.

“And the last time I saw my father, in prison.

I was eight years old.

There was a hallway and then a fence.

He was behind.

He told my sister and me: “I really want to hug you.”

But he stayed with that desire, because his hands and ours couldn't touch.

I had promised my aunt that she wouldn't cry.

And I didn't do it.

I swallowed back my tears.

Afterwards, I haven't been able to cry for years.

It impacted me a lot.

There isn't a day that I don't remember."

Interior page of the book 'El abismo del olvido', by Paco Roca and Rodrigo Terrasa.

PACO ROCA AND RODRIGO TERRASA (ASTIBERRI)

That farewell is one of the most emotional pages in the book.

“I got very excited when I drew it,” Paco Roca confesses to Pepica Celda.

She then shows something that she has kept for 84 years, a lock of José's hair, which she suddenly turned gray when he knew he was going to be shot.

She has it wrapped in a piece of paper.

“At first I thought that taking him out of the grave was too big for me, truth be told,” he admits.

“I never threw in the towel, but it cost a lot.

A lot of work, a lot of paperwork, a lot of travel, a lot of conversations with other families of those who were shot who did not want to open the grave and whom I had to convince that my father was at the top, which he was.

It took me eight years, but I was very convinced and I did it.

Afterwards I had him for two days and two nights at my house.

Well, the bones of it.

I spoke to him a lot and then buried him with my mother on April 14, Republic Day.”

She was the first person to achieve an exhumation in Paterna under the coverage of the Historical Memory Law of 2007.

Next to Celda, 2,238 victims of Franco's repression between 1939 and 1956 were buried in more than 100 graves in that cemetery. It is the place where the first execution has been proven once the Civil War ended, on April 3, 1939, and the second with the most executions in the post-war period, only surpassed by the Eastern cemetery of Madrid.

It is also the setting for another recent comic,

María, la Jabalina

, by Cristina Durán.

Trucks full of people condemned to death, tied up, arrived at a wall near the cemetery called El Terrer and known as “the wall of Spain.”

Men and women of different ages and backgrounds;

above all, from the working class.

In the records, repeated occupations appear such as day laborer, farmer, laborer, bricklayer.

They were taken down, shot, and taken to the cemetery along a path known as “the path of blood” – along which the dead dripped – to throw them in a pile in a common grave.

Part of that wall still stands, next to which they have left some plastic flowers, a dedication — “in memory of the 2,238 people shot” — and a wreath with the republican flag.

 The Paterna wall where 2,238 victims of Franco's regime were shot.

MÒNICA TORRES / PACO ROCA AND RODRIGO TERRASA (ASTIBERRI)

In the central patio of the cemetery the graves that have been opened are marked;

those that are opening at the moment.

Roca and Terrasa have their cell phones full of photos of exhumations, of bones, of drawings that they have been making of what the shootings and burials were like as explained to them by the experts in a documentation task that lasted two years.

Tombstones from the Paterna cemetery, which remember the victims of the shootings.

MÒNICA TORRES / PACO ROCA AND RODRIGO TERRASA (ASTIBERRI)

The story of the Celdas is intertwined in the book with another, that of Leoncio Badía, the gravedigger of José and so many others shot like him.

A Republican who ended up burying his own for years.

And that he helped many families preserve memories, such as the lock of hair that Pepica keeps, and to bury objects with the dead that could help in his later identification.

Archaeologists found inside some graves small glass bottles with the name and surname of the executed person written on a piece of paper.

Badía had left them there for the future.

And in the future they helped, for example, to identify José Celda.

Badía represents dignity in the midst of horror.

His tomb is also in the central patio of the Paterna cemetery, very close to the graves.

He is buried next to one of his children, who died at 18 months old.

Photos of both preside over the tombstone.

His daughter Maruja remembers him as someone special who, despite everything that had happened, never instilled hatred in them.

“Sometimes his eyes gave off an impressive sadness,” she recalls.

“I guess I was remembering.

But he didn't talk much about what he had experienced.

He wanted to protect us.

My father loved to read, he liked astronomy, the cosmos.

He was always teaching us things.”

A series of the program

A vivir que son dos días

, on Cadena Ser, told his story in 2018. And, now, he is the second protagonist of

El abismo del olvido

.

“For me it is very important that all this is told for the sake of memory, for the dignity of the victims, so that what happened is known,” says Maruja.

“And I think that a format like comics can reach a wide and diverse audience.”

The success of the book has surprised the authors themselves.

“Every book that Paco Roca releases starts out as a success in the world of comics, but this one has taken a huge step towards the general public,” explains Javier Zalbidegoitia, editor of Astiberri.

“It is their greatest success to begin with and we have already completed the translation in seven countries.

I think the secret of Paco's career is that he is very rigorous, not a pamphleteer, and does very important dissemination work;

He is also a tremendous storyteller, and his graphics are attractive to all types of audiences.

His readers stay.”

“We wanted the book to be understood anywhere, at any time,” says Terrasa.

One of his first books,

Wrinkles

, came out with a circulation of 3,000 copies.

At the presentation, in the cafeteria of the Reina Sofía Museum at the end of 2007, 12 people attended.

But that work won the Barcelona Comic Fair award, the National Comic Award and was later made into a film and presented at the San Sebastián festival.

It won two Goyas, for best animated film and best adapted screenplay.

And the Rock phenomenon began.

“To date it has sold 94,000 copies and is still in bookstores,” says Zalbidegoitia.

“Then came

The Cartoonist's Winter

,

The Furrows of Chance

,

The House

—which has just been adapted to film and has been published in 15 countries, including Korea—or

Return to Eden

.”

Some are very personal stories.

Others, such as

The Furrows of Chance

, delve into shedding light on forgotten episodes.

In that case, it was the story of La Nueve, a division of the Free French Army formed by Spanish republicans during World War II, a 2013 work that has sold 84,000 copies.

Maru Badía, next to the grave of her father, Leoncio Badía, in the Paterna cemetery. Mònica Torres

Roca and Terrasa received the critics' award on March 14, in Seville, for

El abismo del olvido

.

They were there signing books for more than two hours.

“There is still some feeling that comics are something childish, adolescent… but that is not the case,” says Alfredo Sáez, 33 years old.

“Paco Roca's works are very profound, and for me this book is the most emotional of all.

What I like most about him is that he doesn't sell the stories in a moralizing way.

He puts you in the shoes of a woman like Pepica, and it is almost impossible not to connect with what she feels.

Probably also because of his drawing style.”

“I really like how he tells stories,” adds Adriana Santos, 47 years old.

“The honesty with which he approaches the issues.”

“Our country has more questions than answers, and Paco Roca tries, based on excellent documentation, to shed light without being partisan,” says Pako Mulero, 45 years old.

“This book should be in high schools and universities.”

Pepica Celda likes to hear that many young people are reading the book;

and that Roca and Terrasa are being contacted by schools throughout Spain to talk about their history, the post-war period, and the graves of Franco's regime.

Before saying goodbye to them, and to his nephew Vicent García Devis, who is accompanying us, he looks at the book again.

“For me this is a gem,” he tells them.

“My father was what I loved most in this world.”

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