Jose Luis Cubo looked on as forensic experts unearthed the body of a man his grandfather had helped bury at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, following an execution carried out by fascist forces. According to members of the Historic Memory Recovery Association, the remains recovered from a muddy pit in farmland at Vegas de Matute, about 75km north of Madrid, belong either to Luis Garcia Hernandez, a 42-year-old teacher and union activist, or to Julio Maroto Ortega, a 60-year-old road worker.

The excavation forms part of an initiative launched by victims’ groups in 2000 and expanded by the socialist-led government in 2018 to confront and address crimes committed under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. In Vegas de Matute, Cubo, now 83, recalled how his grandfather, Lorenzo Cubo, witnessed a Falange militia truck arrive, heard gunshots, and later joined locals in burying the bodies under the cover of night.

“This area was known as the death zone. We kept farming it, and the wheat grew much taller where we believed the bodies lay,” Cubo said. The legacy of Franco continues to divide Spanish society. His death 50 years ago on Thursday (Nov 20) paved the way for Spain’s transition to democracy and eventually its entry into the European Union and NATO.

The government, which has been honouring the victims, says it is about halfway through its large-scale effort to exhume and properly memorialise those buried in mass graves during the civil war (1936–1939) and Franco’s nearly 40-year regime. There is no official count of those who disappeared during that period, but in 2008 former High Court judge Baltasar Garzón estimated the number of victims at about 114,000. Officials believe only around 20,000 can still be recovered due to time, development, and other factors.

Roughly 9,000 bodies have been located so far, and the remaining recoverable ones are expected to be exhumed within the next four years, State Secretary for Democratic Memory Fernando Martínez López told Reuters. Although only 700 have been formally identified, the government maintains that each recovered body has value, noting that unidentified remains are respectfully reburied in designated memorial locations. “Every mass grave we open closes a wound,” Martínez said.