Fotografía de Valentín Sanz.
www.quieneseran.blogspot.com
the traditional and infamous Spanish death penalty. memory of what happened had to survive hidden,
These court-martials were initiated exclusively when it was not lost in oblivion. More than eighty
by military personnel, on the basis of accusations years after the murder, some families were still
and denunciations that were largely based only on unaware that their relative had been executed in
rumours or on negative reports of conduct drawn the post-war period, and not during the war at the
up by the victors. The real chances of defence for hands of the “red army”. Shifting the focus from
the accused were slim and there was no judicial the family memory to the historical record, during
guarantee at all during the trials. the dictatorship it was not possible to count the
number of victims executed in the vicinity of the
As a result, 2,937 people were executed in Madrid Madrid cemetery, but this situation persisted during
during this period. Most of their relatives could the following decades, even during the democracy.
not even recover the bodies to bury them in an Researches and relatives did not have any access to
appropriate tomb: only about four hundred managed the documentation, in the custody of the Army also
to escape the fate of the common ossuary of the responsible for the courts-martial, until well into the
cemetery, upon the prescription of the ten years nineties. It was not until 1997 when it was possible
in the charity tomb. Those who succeeded in doing to perform the first study on the victims, carried out
so, after the corresponding request to the military mainly thanks to the consultation of the cemetery
authority, could only perform the religious service documentation.
and burial “in the strictest privacy”, and “without
any ostentation nor ceremony”. However, this
situation only affected the bodies, so... What about
the names? In the families of the defeated, the
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