Silva on 10 years of exhumations
Emilio Silva with an image of his grandfather. (Photo courtesy of Jordi Carreño, jordicarreno.wordpress.com)
Today’s El País Emilio Silva writes a combative op-ed to mark the 10-year anniversary of the day that volunteers began digging in Priaranza del Bierzo to look for the remains of his grandfather, executed during the Spanish Civil War. Soon after, Silva founded the Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica:
That corner of the world, one autumn day, saw the coming together of children and grandchildren of those who had lived with few rights during the dictatorship, in an apartheid in which they barely had the opportunity to survive, and in which hundreds of thousands had to emigrate, moving far away from Francoism in order to build a dignified future. That meeting between different families with relatives in different graves was the seed of the Association for the Recuperation of Historical Memory, a collective that has arisen literally from a need and that over the past ten years has exhumed and identified hundreds of disappeared, victims of Francoist violations of human rights.
En aquella esquina del mundo, en un día de otoño, se encontraron hijos y nietos de quienes habían vivido durante la dictadura con pocos derechos, en un apartheid en el que apenas tuvieron oportunidades para sobrevivir y cientos de miles de ellos tuvieron que emigrar lejos del franquismo para poder edificar un futuro digno. Aquel encuentro de diferentes familias de distintas fosas fue la semilla de la Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica, un colectivo surgido literalmente de una demanda y que en los últimos diez años ha exhumado e identificado a cientos de desaparecidos por las violaciones de derechos humanos de la represión franquista.
More here.
