On October 23, 2023, just one year ago, work began on the ground to exhume the victims of the 1936 coup and Franco’s repression in the graves of the La Salud cemetery in Córdoba. It was two years before, in October 2021, when previous surveys in the painting of the Virgen de los Dolores found the remains of at least thirteen people, murdered and thrown on top of each other, confirming the appearance of a large mass grave of reprisals. of the Civil War in this cemetery. Surveys like that one and those of the San Rafael cemetery showed certainty about the reality that documents, oral and written testimonies, as well as photographic evidence, had described: More than 4,000 people were retaliated against and murdered during the Civil War and Franco’s regime in Córdobaand thrown into common graves in both cemeteries.
It was 87 years after the beginning of that horror when the work finally began and today, a year later, the team of specialists working in La Salud has recovered the remains of 290 reprisalswhile he continues his work in the open probes in the painting of the Virgen de los Dolores and plans to excavate a new one in the coming weeks to reach more victims, discover the real limits of the grave and if it is still under the adjacent military painting of Santa Barbara.
The work is currently being carried out at a elevation of 3.70 meters below ground level in the La Salud cemetery. Up to that point they have excavated in one of the two open boreholes in the Virgen de los Dolores grave. And there, the specialists believe that they have already exhausted the depth of space with burials from the coup d’état and Franco’s repression. Due to the stratigraphy, the position and orientation of the last bodies found on which they work, some of which are found under a wall that was built in 1936 according to photographs of the time, they think that these remains already belong to previous burials and they work to certify it thus, as explained to Cordopolis the coordinator of the work, Daniel Quiroga.
The concealment that has protected the burials
In the adjacent borehole, excavation still remains to be done until reaching that level of 3.70 meters and reaching the same level. Until now, the team of specialists has been able to rescue the remains of reprisal victims buried in different phases in the grave: first, a group of “ritualized burials, in coffin”, from 1938 and 1939; then a second layer with multiple burials – “of 4, 15 and up to 17 individuals together”– and also individual tombs with stacked coffins, which would date from the coup d’état in July 1936 to April 1937. And to this are added the reductions and other remains found.
Quiroga recalls that, from the documentation and testimonies, it is known that, only in the painting of the Virgin of Sorrows where they work, the bodies of more than 300 people were thrown, of whom names and surnames are recorded, and another 600 are estimated to be there. in charity graves.
In this enormous work, the specialists are having to cover large areas of land, with the peculiarities of being in the oldest cemetery in the city and everything that was experienced there during Franco’s repression. It is striking, for example, how “the hiding” of the burials of those who were retaliated against, without pointing them out, has contributed in some way to the protection of the remains, under different layers of earth.
A third excavation in Virgen de los Dolores
They already have the new excavations in mind. While they exhaust the two surveys opened in this year of work, in the coming weeks they will open a third in the same painting of the Virgin of Sorrows, from the current excavation to the south wall of the cemetery and also to the limit with the painting of Santa Bárbara next door, where there are military burials.
With this third survey, on the one hand, excavation will be carried out like the previous ones to exhume the remains of any reprisal victims, in an area where it is suspected that there could also be multiple deposits of bodies. And, on the other hand, the limit of the grave will be reached to check if it is still under the burials of the military personnel, which would certify this extreme and could lead to requiring new excavations in that space.
After all this, when this third survey and the exhumations it yields are completed, the specialists will continue the work in another area of the cemetery where there are also more graves from repression, found in previous works: the painting of San Plácido.
At the moment, the agreement and the financing of the four administrations – Government, Junta de Andalucía, Provincial Council and Córdoba City Council – indicate that the work will last until the end of 2025. But specialists already warn that the size of the La Salud graves will require extending the task.
Meanwhile, in parallel with the recovery of the bodies from the graves, the remains of each individual and the objects that appear next to them are analyzed in detail by anthropologists, archaeologists and conservators. From the remains, the closest possible biological profile of each victim is extracted – sex, age, height, illnesses, etc. – as well as the details and objects that provide information about that person. This characterization is documented and will be complementary to the DNA test that, finally, is carried out in the laboratory in charge of this at the University of Granada and certifies the identification of the victims in cases that can be verified with their relatives.
