From the Exhumation of Bodies to Historical Knowledge: An Analysis of Francoist Repression in Southwest Spain

Recent research into the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and the first years of the Francoist dictatorship (1939–1975) estimates that approximately 200,000 people were executed in Spain during this period, either extrajudicially or after popular tribunals or court martials. The bodies of the victims were for the most part buried in mass graves, thrown into riverbeds or disposed of in mines or caves. In this paper, I discuss how forensic examination of the mass graves can yield new evidence about political repression and shed new light on documentary and oral sources. I employ a multidisciplinary approach that combines archaeology and forensic anthropology to reconstruct the facts around the killings and produce new historical knowledge about the traumatic past of contemporary Spanish society.