Archaeological excavations completed at Civil War mass grave in Málaga

Archaeological excavations completed at Civil War mass grave in Málaga
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By h.b. - Mar 3, 2010 - 7:57 PM

San Rafael Cemetery - EFE

The dig at the San Rafael Cemetery has taken three years

The final report from the archaeologists and volunteers working at the San Rafael cemetery in Málaga in excavations as part of the Historical Memory Law has concluded that the victims were shot there over a period longer than two decades. Calculations put the killings between February 1937 and May 1957, giving some indication of the size of the repression across the country.

More than 200 families have donated their DNA at Málaga, hoping to finally find closure. However identification is complicated given the number of bodies and how they were placed in the mass graves, alternated with levels of quicklime.

The remains which are identified will be handed over to the families who can bury them where and how they wish. The Association against Silence and Forget hopes to create a pantheon to house the remaining bones, and that a memorial park be constructed, but that depends on Málaga City Hall.

The three years of work has resulted in the recovery of the remains of 2,840 people at the site, located at different levels in nine mass graves. The work, led by Francisco Espinosa, has revealed at total of 4,471 shot victims, registered as being in San Rafael, but then taken elsewhere, including to the Valle de los Caídos in El Escorial.

The weeks following the fall of Málaga were the most crucial showing that more than 3,000 were killed at the site in 1937, to which you have to add the hundreds who died on the famous organised flight along the road to Almería.

Another conclusion is that there were more men than women in the mass graves, and the average age of victims was between 20 and 40. The bodies of more than 300 children have also been recovered, nearly all of them children of republicans who died in prison or from the famine which affected the province of Málaga after the war.

The results of the investigation, which was supported by the three levels of public administration and Málaga University, were presented in the Picasso Museum on Wednesday May 3 2010.

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