‘Closing the circles of pain’: Franco victims finally come home as 50th anniversary of dictator’s death looms

Families at Magallón cemetery with the remains of loved ones killed during the Spanish civil war to be laid to rest in a communal grave. Photograph: Markel Redondo/Panos/the Observer

Juan Chueca Sagarra was buried for the third time late on Wednesday afternoon, his tiny coffin, topped with a single white rose, stowed in a crypt in his home town of Magallón, which sits among vineyards and wind turbines under the huge, low skies of Aragón.

His homecoming was as overdue as his murder was savage, and his afterlife has been peripatetic. The farm worker, trade unionist and father of five was 42 when he and five other men were shot dead by Francoists in the cemetery in the neighbouring town of Borja in August 1936.