I
was
to bury the remains of my grandfather from the common pit.
My father, I always remember, was to talk about my grandfather, Aquilino,
who was taken to a civil war, to Cañices, and they killed him,
who never came back to see him again.
And all that, I always had that remorse, my father always said,
why did that happen to him?
Why did that happen to his brothers, to his father, to his family?
What has moved me to get to this point, to try to recover where my grandfather's bones are,
I think he really ignored my father, and my father died four years ago,
and there, on top of that, he could not get it, perhaps due to lack of knowledge,
perhaps because, I don't know why, because he gave him something, to take that step.
Through my father's death, when I think I took more strength to say,
now yes, because of my father's memory, and because of my grandfather,
and also because of myself, because it is my duty, I believe, my obligation, my right.
Mítio Gil, who is the father of Chuchi, and also my father,
a few years before he died, he was already in contact with the historical memory,
they were here talking to him, he had conversations and such,
and then he wanted to add his father, and he started taking the first steps.
Then the disease came over him, and that's where everything was left, now he took my cousin back.
Well, it was the comments that I always heard from my uncle in life,
he died about 15 years ago, 17, and he always told me, I was still a kid,
and he told me that here, on the top of the cemetery, on the top of the corner,
there is where they had shot and killed his father, my grandfather.
This would be the night of September 13th to 14th, 1936,
and he always said that he was forbidden to come here at the time of Franco, right?
Let's see if we can find him, let's see if we can add the remains,
I know that they are not identified, and at least to be able to bury them
where he is not buried, he is shot, he is killed and he is there shot.
I am against the illusion of the world, and I am inside, angry, angry, maybe,
but I know that we are going to find them and I know that I am going to dance and shout joy, that is clear,
and I think I can make a dream, a reality, a desire, a reality.
We are looking for a common grave with five people who were murdered in 1936.
It is a fairly crowded area, it should be relatively easy to find them if they really are inside.
What we do is follow a methodology, as in all cases,
with a excavator machine, and go digging,
and observe all the burials that can come out, analyzing them,
to be able to dig or verify that it is the pit, and that is a very slow process,
and that always takes about two or three days of search.
There have always been two paths, two stories,
one is this version, the one that my uncle and my father always told me about,
and the other one is the civil part of the cemetery,
where they buried the children, the people who were murdered,
the red and evil people, who then called them and kept calling them like that,
and we have tried to call the historical memory and try to find it,
to tell my version, and they have been very grateful to me,
and we are just digging the other part, the civil part.
We have not found anything at the moment,
and if not, we will have to come back here and get closer to the version of my father and my uncle,
who surely are not there, but are here somewhere.
This is a chair, isn't it?
This is a chair.
This is the one on the ground, this is the one on the ground.
This is the one on the ground.
This is the one on the ground.
This is the one on the ground.
But that antigo has to be with the chair over there.
It's over there.
It's right over there.
Okay, okay.
That's a very limited amount, right?
Yes.
But that also tells us that under these conditions there is land.
So we have to get out of this.
Well, we're going there.
But that's the time here.
Of course.
That's the major people.
And one gives you a version, another one,
another one talks to you,
another one tells us what,
another one tells us what.
I don't know what to do.
Every time we look for a well
and we're at the time of the prospect
and we ask people,
many times they tell us,
if you had come a year ago,
you would have known such a person
that he knew where they were.
And as the years go by,
everything will be much more complicated.
But well, in the end,
that's what we intend to do,
at least offer them the possibility
to find their missing people.
And if they don't show up,
well, at least they know they've tried it
and that's why they're much calmer.
Most of the things we look for,
many of them don't show up.
It's been a long time,
and the older people,
I don't know if someone said
that they were here before
and that that person is dead,
but it happens to us all the time.
Patience, because at the end of the day
you see that this goes slowly
and you have to go slowly.
And Patricia, we've had many years,
many years,
for a little bit bad,
but it happens that the nerves attack me
in this sense and I want it,
and I want it, and I want it.
The grandfather was named Aquilino,
he had six children,
he had a son who was 18 years old,
and when the Civil War broke out,
my father was in front of him
and he was put in prison.
The grandfather
contacted a man
who had a son named Aquilino,
who had a son named Aquilino,
who had a son named Aquilino,
who had a son named Aquilino,
who had a son named Aquilino,
who had a son named Aquilino,
who had a son named Aquilino
and who had a son named Aquilino,
who had a son named Aquilino.
And who
went in and spent time in sentences
with similar men
who had both organized
at the end of the ideas and then there was the sentence of him coming to look for him at home
they took him and we did not see him again, that is, I do not know why he had not been born but my grandmother
no longer saw him again, we do not know exactly what the reason was, it is the reason for the
aldeas, the small polices that made the ranch, the envy and then there were four arguments and
they put me in fear and picked up signatures from one, signatures from the other, practically to the
force and I think that was the reason. I think that report never meant that they would kill him
much less, no neighbor in the town has heard that he had killed anyone and my grandfather in fact
did not kill him, they killed him in the Civil Guard and my father told me in life that he had six years and
if he remembers his grandfather, he remembered that night that they woke him up, he arrived in the Civil Guard
with the horses and they took him out and the family there crying and saying goodbye to everyone, he was
there in the barracks of Alcanins, they had him there for two days, then my father told me that he found out
that they had mistreated him, that he heard screams and the voices of the sufferings and others, I said to
us when we open a
force, we always put a complaint in the barracks of the most close civil guard, we always denounced that there was a
few human remains with obvious signs of violence and what we are looking for is that at that moment the
justice is put in motion and investigated what has happened with those cases in very few
occasions the civil guard has been transferred to take some photos to put them together with that procedure
but in most cases, in most cases, not even a patrol of the civil guard
comes close and well, after 15 days the resolution of the trial arrives telling you that the case is given by the
Supreme Court based on the law of amnesty of 77 and in the end you realize that these crimes are not going to be investigated
th
unchanged, including civil
citizens, the
consequences were all in
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das
tricating to the children's
of the cemetery where the children were buried.
Correct.
If the children were buried, it could be that these people buried it
in the background, in a marginal part of the part where the children were buried.
But we have seen that the civil cemetery has not been used for anything,
except for three or four burials, and it has not been used for anything else.
So it could make sense this part here.
At any moment they are talking to us inside the cemetery.
But what it would be good to know is if at any moment someone talks to us outside the cemetery.
Even today, people are afraid, they are afraid of talking,
because they ask and say yes, and they don't end up telling the truth.
And I say that it is worth more than they say,
a word of more than not a word of less.
A word of more can be discarded, a word of less, you are not a divine.
I am excited, I am worried because
it is very difficult to find them, surely,
because they might have given us false clues.
My wish would be for them to find themselves,
to be able to give them the dignity that they did not give them at the time
when they put it under the ground.
I think it would be an act of dignity for the whole family,
even to be in the cemetery.
I think that all the democratic governments,
that when democracy was established,
it is true that there was to be a lot to be mimicked
and there was not to be defined so much.
But then, with the democracy sitting down,
they had to have done it by law,
that no Spanish would have any cuneta.
And that we did not presume so much of Spain.
Because it is not a common thing to have a cuneta.
And that we do not presume so much of Spain, because it has not cured the wounds.
If they want an image of Spain, they clean it first.
It is very sad from the point of view,
from the first moment, from an institutional point of view,
that it is not the Spanish state itself
who tries to solve a problem as serious as this one,
and that it leaves 114,000 people buried in cunetas
as if they had never existed.
That is very sad, but on the other hand,
it is very sad that a person like Jesus,
who is trying to look for his grandfather,
that there are people who consider that he is doing badly to look for him.
We talk about the victims themselves,
because the victims were the ones who suffered,
the ones who were murdered,
but behind each of those victims there is a family
that grew up without a father, without a brother, without a grandfather.
That today, one can think about it and think about their families,
if possible, they would suffer the same loss,
and if they had it in a common grave,
they would try to get it out, for sure.
My cousin has made a very big effort
and we have been through all this for a few years.
And if he didn't find us,
I would have a deep sadness for the rest of my life.
This is a wound that we have inherited.
And really, really, I would like to close it.
Yes, I would like to close it, really, from the bottom of my heart.
Seeing my father suffer so much
and remember his father so many times,
I don't even want to be able to give him a rose.
I don't even want to be able to give him a rose,
I just would lose that.
This story, in the end,
we don't have to rewrite it,
we are not rewriting the story.
We are leaving the discovery a real story,
a local story that has happened in many towns in Spain
and that, in the end, it becomes a national story.
And if it wasn't told at the time
and it hasn't been told after the transition,
and in these 40 years that have passed after Franco's death,
then we have to start changing it,
and we have to start telling the story really as it happened.
To be pages when my grandfather was in a common grave,
I couldn't pass it as a grandson I am,
and I try to know the truth
so that it doesn't happen again what happened with my grandfather,
that many know it perfectly.
I hope that it doesn't happen again in the future,
for the next generations,
but that they know that this happened,
that there was death, murder, injustice, very injustice,
leaving women and orphaned children,
who didn't even return their bodies to their families
so that they could bury them,
and that they are constant, that they are the reflection of the past
so that it never happens again.
That is my great wish.
A recognition only for the future generations.
May it never happen again, please.
