Spain faces its civil war pain

A small group of people are huddled in a clearing, near the tiny village of San Juan del Monte. The summer sun is blazing and they could be on a weekend break. But the pine wood hides something altogether more sinister - the graves of five men who were led away one night 72 years ago and never came back. A group of archaeologists are patiently dusting off five mangled skeletons lying at the bottom of a pit about the size of a bomb crater. One skull looks up to the sky. Look a little closer and you notice a hole between the eyes. This is where a 9mm bullet entered. In this wretched pit, among the pine trees in the northern region of Castile and Leon, are the remains of five more of Spain's very own 'disappeared'. Julio Maroto San Jose, his father Roman Maroto Rico, Rogelito Tello, and the brothers Marcos Parra Barberra and Salvador Parra Barberra were shot by supporters of General Francisco Franco on August 25, 1936, just after the start of the Spanish civil war. The four youngest were all in their 20s; most had children. One night they were hauled off by police in a truck and murdered. Their only 'crime' was to belong to the General Workers Union. Seventy-two years later, a small band of volunteers has arrived to exhume the bodies and give them a decent burial. Historians believe there could be between 100,000 and 500,000 others like them buried across Spain. During the Spanish civil war of 1936 to 1939, and afterwards while Franco ruled Spain, his supporters, as well as the Republicans on the other side, carried out summary executions, dumping the innocent victims in hundreds of mass graves. One victim was Federico Garcia Lorca, the great poet and playwright, who was shot by Franco supporters in 1936 near his home in Granada. He is thought to lie in mass grave nearby. Many of these mass graves dotted across the country remained untraced until a small band of campaigners, whose fathers, grandfathers or uncles disappeared into the night a lifetime ago, began the painstaking task of tracing their loved ones. Often local people knew where the graves were but were too afraid to say, until now. After Franco died in 1975, the Spanish government preferred to pretend the killings never happened. It passed an amnesty law in 1977, absolving the guilty of blame. There was also an unofficial 'pact of silence' in which the past was supposedly laid to rest. But the wounds of the bitter civil war did not heal so easily. Now volunteers are determined the dead will not lie unremembered. Almost every weekend, ageing relatives and members of groups such as the Association for the Recuperation of the Historical Memory (ARHM) carry out exhumations like the one at San Juan del Monte. The state has offered little help before, but now Spain's campaigning judge Baltasar Garzon has become involved. He is the first investigating magistrate to trace Spain's disappeared. In the past, Judge Garzon has investigated the crimes of dictators and their henchmen in foreign countries, notably Argentina and Chile. He is best known in the international arena for his unsuccessful attempt in 1998 to extradite the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet while he was in London for medical treatment. After legal pressure from campaigners in Spain, Judge Garzon has demanded that state archives and church records be opened to reveal just how many Spaniards - from both sides - were shot by firing squads or executed after a summary trial, and where they might be buried. He is compiling a 'census of the dead' - a kind of map of where those who died now lie. Judge Garzon will attempt to establish whether there is any proof, as campaigners claim, that these murders were carried out on a systematic basis under orders from above. If a case can be made, the judge could decide to call for a Spanish version of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, though this seems unlikely. Or he could call to account the killers, if they can be found and if they are still alive. Whatever happens, it will be a long and tortuous process. Emilio Silva, president of the ARHM, whose grandfather, also called Emilio, was killed and his body dumped in a grave like those in San Juan del Monte, says: 'Garzon is the first judge to ask for the official archives to be opened. We believe this could produce information that proves that these killings were systematic. 'If that can be shown to be the case, perhaps we could see a commission set up to find the real truth or even call those who carried out these crimes to answer.' Judge Garzon declined to be interviewed. But for the relatives of those who were killed, justice is not the first concern. As Julia Maroto Velasco, 71, peers into the grave at San Juan del Monte, she tries to guess which one of the skeletons might have belonged to her father Julio or her grandfather Roman. Her mother, Ana Velasco, 93, was two months pregnant with her when the men were called on by police officers. Roman protested when his son Julio was dragged off, so he was dragged off too. They never returned. 'When they said they had found my father's body, it was the best thing that happened to me,' says Julia. 'Of course it makes me angry to think of these injustices. Growing up without a father or a grandfather was terrible. But I never thought I would get this happiness and sadness at the same time.' About 320km south of San Juan del Monte is the Valley of the Fallen outside Madrid. Here is where the victors of the Spanish civil war were remembered - as heroes, buried in a huge, gaudy mausoleum. A massive cross dominates the horizon as you approach. Buried deep in the bowels of the place are Franco and thousands of troops who died for 'El Generalissimo'. The contrast between the forgotten grave of San Juan del Monte and others like it and this grandiose memorial perfectly represents the way the issue continues to divide modern Spain. Last year, Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero passed the Historical Memory Law, making the search for those who disappeared during Franco's rule the responsibility of the government. But it was fiercely opposed by conservatives who believe history is being rewritten by those who lost the civil war. They claim Mr Zapatero, whose grandfather was shot by Franco's supporters, introduced the law as a way of getting revenge. Away from politics, there is still much resistance to poring over the past. A documentary about the issue, Santa Cruz por ejemplo (Santa Cruz for Example), tells the story of how the village of Santa Cruz in the northern province of Burgos reacts to a team who come to exhume the bodies of a group of men killed by Franco's supporters. In one telling scene, the Austrian filmmaker, Gunter Schwaiger, asks four old men sitting on a bench if they want to talk about it. There is silence. But from being a taboo subject, the civil war and its bloody history have become almost the in thing for writers and filmmakers in Spain.In 2006, the Oscar-winning film Pan's Labyrinth, directed by Guillermo del Toro, achieved international success. The film depicts a young girl who escapes into a fantasy world to get away from the brutality she sees around her during the war. Scores of other books, films and documentaries have been released in recent years. Yet outside Spain, experts believe there is little awareness of the mass killings of the civil war. Paul Preston, a British historian with the London School of Economics, is writing a book on the slaughter of innocents called The Spanish Holocaust. 'I don't think people have the slightest idea. It is big news to them. Franco still has an amazingly good press in the Anglo-Saxon world,' Professor Preston says.