Emilio Silva Barrera (born November 9, 1965, in Elizondo, Navarre) is a Spanish sociologist, journalist, and activist for the recovery of Historical Memory. [1] He is one of the founders and president of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH), a collective that has been searching for the mass graves of victims of repression in the Francoist zone during the Spanish Civil War and the subsequent Franco dictatorship. [2]
Though he initially aspired to pursue poetry, [3] Silva graduated in Sociology and Political Science from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and has dedicated most of his professional life to journalism. Within his journalistic career, he was the content director of the television program Caiga quien caiga during Manel Fuentes' tenure. [3]
In the summer of 1999, he left his job to write a novel related to his family history during the repression unleashed by the Francoist troops and paramilitaries after the July 18, 1936 coup. In March 2000, following an interview with the communist militant and former political prisoner Arsenio Marco, he located in Priaranza del Bierzo (León) the site where his grandfather, Emilio Silva Faba, had been buried in a mass grave along with twelve other men. They were all left-wing and republican militants murdered by Falangists on October 16, 1936, during the Spanish Civil War. [4] [5]
In September 2000, he published an article in La Crónica de León titled: "My grandfather was also a disappeared person." [6] In it, he lamented how Spanish society celebrated the so-called Pinochet case while doing nothing to search for the thousands of men and women who had disappeared due to Francoist repression, murdered by Falangist paramilitaries who hid their bodies to multiply the pain of their families and to declare their belief that those who created Spain's first democratic period during the Second Spanish Republic should not have existed. [1]
Following the exhumation of the grave where the now-known "thirteen of Priaranza" were found, he founded, along with Palma Granados, Jorge López, and Santiago Macías, the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH), of which he is president. The association has been exclusively dedicated to searching for Republican disappeared persons, those who were not rescued by either Francoism or democracy. It has also been responsible for exhuming numerous mass graves and providing extensive documentation to people who have not known anything about their loved ones for decades. [1]
From 2007 to 2014, Silva worked as a political trust position for the mayor's office of the Madrid municipality of Rivas-Vaciamadrid. Additionally, he has worked as a journalist in various media outlets and is part of the team of the radio program La Cafetera de radiocable, directed by journalist Fernando Berlín, where Silva covers news related to Historical Memory. [7] Due to his involvement in the recovery of Spain's Historical Memory and the exhumation processes of mass graves, Silva has appeared in several documentaries narrating these processes, such as Los caminos de la memoria (José Luis Peñafuerte, Spain, 2009), premiered at the Valladolid International Film Festival as part of the official section, [8] [9] [10] Lesa Humanidad (Héctor Faver, Spain, 2017) [11] and Bones of Contention (Bones of Contention, Andrea Weiss, United States, 2017). [12] [13]
The Valley of Cuelgamuros, formerly known as Valley of the Fallen , is a monument in the Sierra de Guadarrama, near Madrid. The valley contains a Catholic basilica and a monumental memorial in the municipality of San Lorenzo de El Escorial. Dictator Francisco Franco ordered the construction of the monumental site in 1940; it was built from 1940 to 1958, and opened in 1959. Franco said that the monument was intended as a "national act of atonement" and reconciliation.
Carlos Arias Navarro, 1st Marquess of Arias Navarro was the prime Minister of Spain during the final years of the Francoist dictatorship and the beginning of the Spanish transition to democracy.
Celso Emilio Ferreiro Míguez (1912–1979) was a Galicianist activist, writer, poet, and political journalist.
The Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory is a Spanish organization that collects the oral and written testimonies about the White Terror of Francisco Franco and excavates and identifies their bodies that were often dumped in mass graves.
The Pact of Forgetting is the political decision by both leftist and rightist parties of Spain to avoid confronting directly the legacy of Francoism after the death of Francisco Franco in 1975. The Pact of Forgetting was an attempt to move on from the Civil War and subsequent repression and to concentrate on the future of Spain. In making a smooth transition from autocracy and totalitarianism to democracy, the Pact ensured that there were no prosecutions for persons responsible for human rights violations or similar crimes committed during the Francoist period. On the other hand, Francoist public memorials, such as the mausoleum of the Valley of the Fallen, fell into disuse for official occasions. Also, the celebration of "Day of Victory" during the Franco era was changed to "Armed Forces Day" so respect was paid to both Nationalist and Republican parties of the Civil War.
Law 52/2007, commonly known as Historical Memory Law, recognises and broadens "the rights and establishes measures in favour of those who suffered persecution or violence during the civil war and the dictatorship." It was passed by the Congress of Deputies on 31 October 2007, on the basis of a bill proposed by the PSOE government of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. The Historical Memory Law principally recognizes the victims on both sides of the Spanish Civil War, gives rights to the victims and the descendants of victims of the Civil War and of the subsequent dictatorship, and formally condemns the repressions of the Franco regime.
Carabanchel Prison was constructed by political prisoners after the Spanish Civil War between 1940 and 1944 in the Madrid neighbourhood of Carabanchel. It was one of the biggest prisons in Europe until its closure in 1998. The structure followed the panopticon model devised by Jeremy Bentham in 1785.
The lost children of Francoism were the children abducted from Republican parents, who were either in jail or had been assassinated by Nationalist troops, during the Spanish Civil War and Francoist Spain, and later from random citizens or girls confined in the notorious Women's Protection Board. The kidnapped children were sometimes also victims of child trafficking and forced adoption.
Francisca Rubio Gámez, better known by the pseudonym Fanny Rubio, is a Spanish professor, researcher, and writer, an expert in contemporary Spanish poetry.
In the history of Spain, the White Terror was the series of assassinations realized by the Nationalist faction during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), and during the first nine years of the régime of General Francisco Franco. Thousands of victims are buried in hundreds of unmarked common graves, more than 600 in Andalusia alone. The largest of these is the common grave at San Rafael cemetery on the outskirts of Málaga. The Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory says that the number of disappeared is over 35,000.
Women prisoners in Francoist Spain were often there because of specific repression aimed at women. During the Civil War, many women were in prison because family members had Republican sympathies or the authorities wanted to lure out male Republican affiliated relatives; it was not a result of anything the women did themselves. The Law of Political Responsibilities, adopted on 13 February 1939, made such repression easier and was not formally removed from the Criminal Code until 1966. Prisoners and people in concentration camps, both male and female, would total over three quarters of a million by the end of the Spanish Civil War. Of these, 14,000 women were held in Las Ventas Model prison in Madrid.
Women in POUM in Francoist Spain were few as many, along with male dominated leadership, were forced into exile following the end of the Spanish Civil War. Those in exile often felt isolated and alone. Those who remained were sometimes sent to prison. POUM women participated in a hunger strike at Madrid's Las Ventas prison in 1946. The group fell by the wayside as Partido Comunista de España became the pre-dominant resistance organization in Spain. The organization finally dissolved during the 1950s in Toulouse, France with its memory kept alive by the wife of its last president, María Teresa Carbone, through the Fundació Andreu Nin.
Gender violence and rape in Francoist Spain was a problem that was a result of Nationalist attitudes developed during the Spanish Civil War. Sexual violence was common on the part of Nationalist forces and their allies during the Civil War. Falangist rearguard troops would rape and murder women in cemeteries, hospitals, farmhouses, and prisons. They would rape, torture and murder socialists, young girls, nurses and milicianas.
Ascensión Mendieta Ibarra, was a Spanish activist for the rights of civilians killed during the Spanish Civil War. She became a symbol for anti-fascist movements – notably the Association for the Recovery of Historic Memory (ARMH) – as a result of her seventy-year struggle to recover the body of her father, Timoteo Mendieta Alcalá, and buried with twenty-three other victims in a mass grave in the cemetery of Guadalajara. Ascensión Mendieta managed to use international human rights law in the so-called "Argentine Complaint" against the crimes of Franco, finally resulting in her father's exhumation in 2017.
The equestrian statue of Francisco Franco was an instance of public art in Madrid, Spain. The statue, depicting dictator Francisco Franco riding a horse, was removed from its location in Nuevos Ministerios and subsequently stored in March 2005.
The Silence of Others is an American–Spanish documentary film written and directed by Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar, which tells the story of the silenced fight of the victims of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.
The Law of Democratic Memory is a law in Spain which came into effect in October 2022, concerning the legacy of Francoist Spain.
Estépar, a village in the province of Burgos, Spain, is the site of multiple mass graves from the Spanish Civil War. Hundreds of Republicans are believed to have been killed there. Many had been held in detention in Burgos which became the headquarters of the Francoist proto-government following the start of the war in 1936. Prisoners were moved down the Arlanzon valley to Estépar to be killed and buried.
In 2011, the Spanish government under then-Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero recommended that the remains of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco be removed from the Valley of the Fallen, where they had been for over 30 years, and be reburied at a location chosen by his family. After a lengthy legal process, his remains were ultimately reinterred at Mingorrubio Cemetery, El Pardo.
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