Spanish dictator Franco’s mass graves unearthed

This video is called Spain debates law to recognise civil war victims – 30 Oct 2007.

From daily The Guardian in Britain:

Spectres of fascist past back to haunt Spain

A new photographic exhibition raises ghosts from Spain that many would rather remain buried – mass graves from the civil war, reports Sarah Wildman

Tuesday November 6, 2007

Early last month, in the shadow of a Romanesque church in Porriño, a tiny town west of Vigo, near the Spanish Atlantic coast, a team of forensic archaeologists, volunteers and psychologists worked diligently, brushing at the earth with their bare hands, with paintbrushes, with delicate instruments.

A small crowd of locals gathered around them, fanning themselves in the heat, some standing a few feet away in the shade of the trees. In the near distance, the verdant hills of Galicia rose up; small children scampered between the gravestones of an ancient cemetery just a few yards away.

The work crawled along meticulously; when a recognisable artifact emerged, the onlookers would gather, clucking and murmuring amongst themselves. A collective sigh went up as a skull emerged, shattered by a bullet hole; two bony feet still wore boots.

The skull and the feet belonged to men who were executed here by the Falange, supporters of Francisco Franco in the early days of the Spanish civil war. They were thrown in this unmarked grave – one of hundreds like it still scattered across Spain – purposefully placed at the foot of the church, explained Javier Ortiz, the head forensic archaeologist, “So everyone would walk on them, forever desecrating them”.

Slide show on the mass graves in Spain: here.