Spain begins to confront its past

Many Spaniards say there are few public forums to discuss the war or the dictatorship. While textbooks illustrate post-1936 Spain, it is the exception, rather than the rule, to formally study those chapters.

The country's center-right government, which has historical ties to the Franco regime, has been criticized for being slow to support efforts to unearth the secrets of the past and foster objective discussion of it.

"The government wasn't paying attention to the requests in the beginning, until [the issue] started receiving attention abroad," says José Luis Rodríguez Jiménez, a history professor at the University Juan Carlos III in Madrid. "Now they've said they will help with the exhumations, it remains to be seen what will actually be done."

Thousands of documents are still believed to be in files restricted to the public. This fall the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory asked the United Nations to request that Spain open its archives so that surviving relatives could find out what happened to family members and where their bodies are buried. The group also wants the government to help defray costs, including DNA testing and dignified reburials.

Mr. Silva says that since his association's effort began last spring, it has received more than 3,000 requests for exhumations and has disinterred 59 bodies. Most of the work is done by volunteers, but local town halls and universities are beginning to donate resources, says Silva, whose grandfather disappeared during the civil war. Although the association was formed in the name of Republican victims, the group maintains it will help relatives of nationalists who disappeared if help is requested.

At various times in the past two decades, the issue of the church's role has been raised, but no admission has been made. A diocesan spokesman in Leon recently said, "And why don't they ask communism to say it is sorry? It has caused much damage throughout the world."

Moriera believes that the wounds of the past can only be healed through a joint effort by the victims, the government, and the church.

As a child of Republican sympathizers, Moriera was among 3,000 Spanish children sent to the Soviet Union during the war. Thousands of others fled or were exiled to other parts of the world.

For the children of the war's "losers," life has not been easy, Moriera says. "They didn't just kill our parents, they killed all of us," he says. "I have felt marginalized my whole life." A retired sculptor, he sits in front of a work he has created for a town hall in northern Spain, where his mother was buried last year. A plaque with the words Nunca Mas (Never Again) etched above two hands, reaching up from the earth, it is one of the first memorials to honor Republicans. "It is both the beginning of a new era," he says, "and the end of my story."

Page: 1 | 2