Forensic scientists are beginning efforts to exhume the remains of 128 people from the huge basilica outside Madrid where 34,000 dead from both sides of the Spanish civil war were buried, and where the body of Gen Francisco Franco also lay for almost half a century.
The exhumations at the Valley of Cuelgamuros – known until last year as the Valley of the Fallen – come after the families of some of those interred there spent almost two decades fighting for their loved ones to receive a dignified burial.
The basilica, 40 miles outside the Spanish capital, was partly built by political prisoners used as forced labour and is ostensibly dedicated to the memory of all those killed in the 1936-39 conflict.
However, only two of the graves beneath the basilica’s 150-metre cross were ever marked – those of Franco and Primo de Rivera, the founder of the fascist Falangist party. Franco’s body was removed from the site by Spain’s Socialist government in 2019; Primo de Rivera’s remains were exhumed and relocated two months ago.
The site still holds the bodies of 33,800 people – republicans and nationalists – which were disinterred from resting places across Spain and reburied anonymously, often without their families’ permission, in the church in an apparent attempt at postwar reconciliation.
According to reports in the Spanish media, a team of forensic scientists, archaeologists, dentists and geneticists has set up a laboratory inside the basilica to analyse and identify remains as work begins on Monday.
Francisco Etxeberria, the forensic anthropologist overseeing the project, has described the recovery of the remains as “a really exceptional challenge”.
Although 21,000 sets of remains were taken there with the knowledge and permission of the families, and those from the nationalist side were labelled with names and surnames, the remainder arrived in boxes stating only how many bodies they contained and which town they came from.
Water has seeped into the floors and walls of the mausoleum’s crypts for decades, destroying many of the boxes and mingling bones.
“There are thousands of boxes in each chapel, and they are stacked from floor to ceiling like shoeboxes,” Etxeberria told the Observer in October 2021.
The exhumations, which have been meticulously planned, come eight months after Spain passed a historical memory law to bring “justice, reparation and dignity” to the victims of the Spanish civil war and subsequent dictatorship.
Among its provisions was the creation of a census and a national DNA bank to help locate and identify the remains of the tens of thousands of people who still lie in unmarked graves, a ban on groups that praise and defend the Franco regime, and the “redefinition” of the Valley of the Fallen to end its glorification of Franco and his dictatorship.
On Monday morning, Isabel Rodríguez, a spokesperson for Spain’s Socialist-led coalition government, said the “long overdue” exhumations were intended to bring dignity to the dead and to their families.
She hit out at Alberto Núnez Feijóo, the leader of Spain’s opposition conservative People’s party (PP), who has said he intends to repeal the new law if he wins next month’s general election. “Why is Feijóo annoyed that the families might want to have their dead buried where they want so they can take them flowers when they want?” she asked.
Some of the relatives of those whose bodies are being exhumed are worried at how long the process has taken and now fear the PP will repeal the law before they can retrieve their loved ones’ remains.
The bodies of Manuel Lapeña, a vet, and his brother Antonio, a blacksmith, were dumped in a mass grave in Calatayud, north-east Spain and then dug up decades later and reburied in the basilica without their families’ knowledge or permission.
Manuel Lapeña’s granddaughter Purificación has spent years fighting to find and reclaim his and Antonio’s remains. Her father, also called Manuel, died at the age of 97 in 2021 and was never able to fulfil his wish to see his father’s remains exhumed and buried with dignity.
“We’ll just have to see what happens over the coming days because there are relatives who just can’t wait any longer because of their age and their health,” she said. “And we’re also scared that all this could be stopped if there’s a change of government in July.”
She said she had first learned that the exhumations were beginning from the media and had only received official notification on Monday. “As ever, it’s the press before the families,” she said.
