Mass Graves, Landscapes of Terror

Abstract

The recent exhumation of mass graves from the Spanish Civil War and the Post-War years, mostly involving the largely abandoned graves of the Francoist rearguard, have become a central element in contemporary debates about the conflict and the regime following it. In this paper, the complexity and dynamism of this process is analysed, including from political and legal initiatives of great social and media impact to local actions on the ground, at times failed, ephemeral or almost imperceptible, but no less crucial. From the point of view of many of the people involved in the pro-exhumation associations, opening up the graves is part of a basic exercise in justice and ‘dignification’, showing the scope and systematic nature of repression while reverting the ‘infrahuman’ disposition of the executed corpses, a feeling crystallised in the common expression ‘thrown’ or ‘buried like dogs’, used very often to justify the need of carrying out exhumations. Politics of dignification and ‘rehumanization’ of these ‘incorrectly’ buried bodies are incorporating, in the last few months, elements drawn from international law, such as the concept of ‘crimes against humanity’.