“Don’t forget me” makes a father promise his 8- and 14-year-old daughters the day before his death. On September 14, 1940, in the village of Paterna, a few kilometers from Valencia, the time was ripe for reprisals. More than a year after the end of the civil war, José Celda Beneyto, 45, gets out of the military truck with his hands tied. Prison prematurely bleached his hair. What is he thinking behind his steel blue eyes? To his wife, Manuela, imprisoned because she was accused of being a communist? To their young children they leave behind?
At his side that day, there were 14 men, aged between twenty and forty years old. Republicans opposed to the nationalist troops of General Francisco Franco, targeted for their ideas or because of settling of scores and stories of jealousy… Despite the end of hostilities, all were sentenced to death during a parody of trial by representatives of the military dictatorship. The soldiers line them up in front of the wall nicknamed “El Terrer” (“The Execution Post”). An order, the sharp sound of guns, then silence. Like his companions, José Celda was thrown into one of the mass graves of Paterna. Tragic irony: a few months after his execution, his widow will receive his pardon by mail.
Descendants of the victims of General Franco’s firing squads at the Paterna cemetery, near Valencia, June 26, 2023.
Samuel Aranda / NYT/REDUX/REA
In 2026, you have to get lost among the pines and rubbish to find the old shooting range. Only two wreaths of dried flowers and the Spanish Republican flag serve as a reminder of what this abandoned wasteland, bordered by a highway ramp, was like. However, between 1939 and 1956, 2,238 people were shot here. The second highest number of victims executed by platoons by the Franco regime, in “peace” times.
“A pretty memorial garden should be built, to restore dignity to these people,” sighs Vicent Garcia Devis, the great-nephew of José Celda. But the political forces in place do nothing, for fear of stirring up the past. » Because in Spain, if the victims of Republican violence were entitled to official recognition from the 1940s, those of Franco’s reprisals fell into oblivion. They will remain there after the death of Franco, with the amnesty law of 1977 guaranteeing impunity for the executioners. “We nicknamed it the pact of silence,” underlines Vicent.
The end of “collective amnesia”
It took more than seventy years – almost three generations – for the first opening of a mass grave in Paterna to be organized. Vicent Garcia Devis remembers this day in 2013 with emotion: “We had no desire for revenge, but simply for justice. » This first exhumation is due to the strength of a woman: Josefa “Pepica” Celda, the youngest of José’s daughters and Vicent’s aunt.
In 2007, she learned that the “law on historical memory” provided for a state financial aid program for the exhumation of mass graves from Francoism. She then embarks on an obstacle course to recover her father’s remains. The administration, cautious, puts obstacles in its way. She also has to face the reluctance of other descendants.
“There was a collective amnesia, caused by decades of fear and shame of being on the wrong side of history,” explains Vicent Garcia Devis. And for good reason: during the dictatorship, the village of Paterna was at the heart of a macabre and fearsomely efficient system. On this “path of death”, military trucks transporting prisoners from all over the region connect the barracks attached to the village, the shooting range and the cemetery. On the ground, the elders remember a “blood-red mark that never faded”.
Thanks to media pressure, the nephew and aunt obtained all the authorizations in 2011. Narrowly: the file was the last approved by the socialist government of José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. Four months later, the conservative right (People’s Party), returned to power, gradually ended state subsidies. This aid will only be reintroduced from 2018 with the arrival of Pedro Sanchez.
In the cemetery of Paterna, a strange discovery
The 2007 memorial law largely entrusts the initiative of exhumations to families. The remains are then generally treated under an archaeological rather than a judicial aspect, an approach denounced by the descendants of victims. José Celda’s pit, soon named “la 126”, is six meters deep and has five “sacas”, these groups of prisoners shot on the same date, piled on top of each other and separated by a layer of lime. José Celda would be buried in the most recent. But how can you be sure?
“The location of the bodies, the names… Everything was recorded in his little notebooks. » Maruja Badia, the daughter of the cemetery caretaker between 1939 and 1945
During the excavations, archaeologists made a strange discovery: under the neck of several victims, a small glass vial was placed. Inside one of them, they decipher a name: Gimeno Ballester. This clue was left by Leoncio Badia, the cemetery guardian between 1939 and 1945. At the risk of his life, this former Republican schoolteacher documented the deaths that the Civil Guard brought to him morning and evening. “When it was possible, he buried them with dignity,” says his daughter Maruja Badia. Here he collected a lock of hair, there a personal object or a piece of fabric to give to the families. The location of the bodies, the names… Everything was recorded in his little notebooks. »
Every All Saints’ Day, the only day on which victims’ relatives had the right during the dictatorship to pay their respects at the cemetery, she remembers a ballet of widows, mothers and bereaved children knocking on the door of their house. “My father pointed out to everyone where their relative was buried. » Because until the advent of democracy in 1975, name plates were systematically destroyed.
Exhumation of mass graves containing the remains of victims of Francoism, September 17, 2018.
Teresa Suarez / REA
By combining the name left by Leoncio Badia and the research of a historian, archaeologists confirm that the open “saca” is indeed that of José Celda. Oral memory, Vicent Garcia Devis’s research in military archives and DNA samples make it possible to identify his bones. Pepica collects them in a plastic box and places them in her room. For three days, she “talks” to her father, hoping to make up for lost time. José Celda was then buried in a neighboring village, with his wife. In the cuff of his pants, a note written on a sheet of toilet paper was found: “I have not forgotten you for a single moment (…). Goodbye forever. »
Time is running out to identify the bodies
At the Paterna cemetery, one of the plaques in grave 126 bears the name “José Navarro Angel”. Maria Navarro never knew this grandfather, who was shot on September 12, 1940. “There was always a total silence around this story, which I felt like a wound. » She felt “guilty for having abandoned him”, when she learned in 2015 that one of the pits, number 113, was the subject of legal proceedings. “I had to get him out of this mass grave,” she insists.
She formed an association to demand the reopening of pit 126 – called “the Earth” because of the large number of buried peasants – and the exhumation of its five “sacas”. Through research, word of mouth and publications on the networks, she gathered around a hundred descendants around her. Time is running out: the victims’ children are gradually disappearing, taking with them valuable DNA for identification.
The excavations begin in January 2022 and last seven months. “I went there several times a week,” she recalls. She decides to go to the Archaeological Museum of Barcelona, where the company that analyzes the human remains found is based. Three reconstructed skeletons are placed in front of her. One of them has a particularly long femur, a sign of large size, and a jaw with a specific shape. Maria is sure: according to the family photographs, it is her ancestor. He will in fact be formally identified a few months later. “I finally met my grandfather, and the image I have of him is that of a skeleton with a bullet in his skull,” she confides, in tears. He was 38 years old. And I, that day, I celebrated my 53rd birthday. »
At the end of the cemetery, the memorial to the victims of Paterna, construction of which began in 2023, is still not finished due to lack of funds. But recently, the provincial council of Valencia has been studying the possibility of collaborating economically. The debate over the exhumations of mass graves still rages in Spain, and the determination of the descendants does not weaken. Because, for them, fighting against oblivion means refusing a second death.
Missing
The last ceremony to date the restitution of remains was organized in Paterna on May 31, with the families of ten victims. Cruz Alemany hopes that this day will come for his great-uncle, shot during the dictatorship. When, in 2019, her father told her this story for the first time, she felt “a real shock”. Despite his research, his ancestor has still not been identified. Like him, around 100,000 victims of the civil war and the repression of Francoism are still missing in Spain. Some, whose graves are covered by a highway, a shopping center or other graves, can never be buried with dignity.
