Death Should Have No Victors

Some weeks ago, we found out that the Ministry of Defense paid €23,000 since 2003 to repatriate the bodies of twenty-nine Spanish soldiers of the División Azul, that were killed in World War II in the then Soviet Union. Apparently, the families of those soldiers get in touch, through the Ministry, with an association in Germany that has permission to find and exhume the remains of those soldiers, most of which died in Leningrad, Novgorod, and Krasny Bor. The remains are then repatriated to Spain for their families to inter, the cost being paid by the Ministry of Defense.

Fine, but it turns out that the División Azul was a contingent of 46,000 volunteers that Franco rounded up and sent to Russia to fight with the German troops as payment to Hitler for helping win the Civil War with bombardments of cities such as Guernika. Many who signed up did so because they were promised food and money for themselves, and money and privileges for their families, or as a way to "expiate" their family's Republican sins. Many others did so because they were ardent believers in Franco and his allies. Of those men, almost five thousand died, and around four hundred were made prisoners of war. The rest were ordered back to Spain when the tide turned, and Franco decided to change allies and get in the good graces of the United States, with an eye to the world after the war. Thanks to that, the last surviving prisoners were returned to Spain in 1954 after Stalin's death, and without Franco's goodwill.

During and after the Spanish Civil War, people were summarily executed, publicly and privately. Many disappeared forever after a nocturnal knock on the door. There were people locally here, who helped the new regime "take care" of those who might be a threat. A few around here were found dead after being missing for a few days. In other parts of Spain, the massacre was greater. It has been estimated that around 114,000 people disappeared in those years, and are buried in mass graves. In 2007, the Socialist party then in power passed the Ley de Memoria Histórica (Law of Historical Memory). This law was meant to bring justice to the Republicans who had fought and died, yet had been ignored after their defeat. Names of Franco's generals would be taken off streets, plaques honoring only the Nationalist dead removed, archives opened up and historians given permission to analyze events, Francoist symbols (yes, they're still around) taken down, and money allocated to finding mass graves and the remains given to their families for proper burial.

In the end, though, precious little was done. The Socialists were voted out of government, after reducing funding thanks to the crisis, and the conservative Populares in power ever since have reduced funding to zero. Not one cent has been allocated to this Law these past years. An association, the Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (ARMH, Association for the Recuperation of Historical Memory), has used private funds and donations to find over a thousand bodies, whose families had wanted to find to bring closure to their personal histories. Many older people, children and grandchildren of those executed want to find them before they themselves die. 

But those who lie in mass graves in Spain were mostly Republicans, and belonged to the losing side. Whenever the subject is brought up in Congress, including the idea of disinterring Franco and his idol, Primo de Rivera, from the Valley of the Fallen, the grotesque monument to the dictator, where thousands of Republicans also lie, their bones jumbled together under the mountain, the governing conservative party contends that it is time to let bygones be bygones, and that it is not a priority for Spaniards. 

Yet, there are funds to repatriate those who fell fighting next to Nazi troops in the Soviet Union. What is the difference between the dead? Well, one set died "fighting for Spain." The other set died "fighting for Marxism." In the end, though, they all died. Their families want closure, and posterity wants to learn the complete truth of our past. If we are to truly forgive the past, then distinctions between the different dead should stop being made. Let's allocate the money necessary, find the graves, and let the families who want their grandfather, grandmother, aunts, uncles, mother, father back, find them and give them proper burial. Even the United Nations called out the Spanish government on this lack of humanity and memory. But Franco's spirit seems to live on in the halls of Spain's Congreso.

Free stock photo of wood, dark, tree, ground
 

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