Newsweek covers Civil War graves
Monument commemorating the victims of Nationalist repression in the mass grave at the San Salvador Cemetery in Oviedo, Spain. Photo Pablo G. Pando. CC BY 2.0.
Mike Elkin, writing for Newsweek, tackles Spain’s lingering legacy of violence committed during the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship:
Until 2000, 25 years after Franco died and Spain began its transition to democracy, investigating the mass graves littering the countryside was taboo. And even now many Spaniards prefer not to revisit the past. The 37-year-long dictatorship cemented a fear and silence into Spanish culture that has proven hard to break. To date, none of Spain’s democratic governments has assumed responsibility for locating and identifying the more than 120,000 noncombatants lying in roadside ditches and other unmarked tombs.
Read the full article here.
