Women pleading with Rebels for Lives of Prisioners, Constantina, Seville – Google Art Project. Public Domain.

A Boston native, Salvador Gómez was an adult by the time he learned that his Spanish grandfather had been shot by the Franco regime. Faced with silence from his family, he undertook his own investigation. He not only discovered what happened, but also why his family had not spoken about it: “Silence was a strategy and a means of survival for widows and orphans of executed Republicans.”

For most of my life, my paternal grandfather, Salvador Gómez Soriano, existed as a vague figure, someone I had never met, his story shrouded in mystery and silence. My father and grandmother rarely spoke about him. All I knew for certain was that he was executed shortly after the Spanish Civil War. I overheard fragments: that he had been an “informant” for the Republic, that the accusations against him were false, and that a pardon arrived only after he had already been executed. He disappeared without ceremony.

Well into adulthood, all I really knew was that my grandfather had been executed by Franco’s regime. Despite a close-knit family and childhood visits to Valencia, I knew almost nothing about him. My dad’s cousin once told me he had been an animal-feed broker, a profession I could not reconcile with a death sentence. I did not know why he was executed, who accused him, what the charges were, when he was tried, or where his remains lay. We never visited a grave while in Valencia. Ambiguity filled every gap. Only now, while conducting research for this essay, do I understand that silence was a form of survival for my grandmother, my father, and my aunt.

This essay is the product of my decision, over eighty years later, to uncover the truth and shine a light on my grandfather’s story. My regret is that I waited too long. My father, grandmother, and others who might have shed light on his story are gone. As Professor Sebastiaan Faber argues, descendants of the executed have become central to Spain’s struggle to reclaim truth and dignity. I welcome the opportunity to join that struggle. My sister, my cousins, and our children will now know Salvador Gómez Soriano’s story.

My grandfather was born on 13 March 1907 in Casas Ibáñez, Albacete. In his twenties, he emigrated to Cuba, either in 1927 or 1929; family memories differ. He traveled with his girlfriend, Carmen Santiago Juárez, and her family. In Cuba, Salvador and Carmen married and lived with her parents for nearly a decade. They returned to Spain in 1935, settling in Campanar, Valencia, where Salvador worked as a commercial agent supporting his aging father-in-law. They lived modestly, like thousands of families across Spain.

Historian Julián Casanova describes Spanish society during the war as a landscape stripped of civility and compassion, where extreme violence became normalized across both sides and the collapse of state authority left no room for neutrality. Survival required choosing a side. My grandfather chose the democratically elected Republic.

When the war began in July 1936, Salvador joined the UGT (Unión General de Trabajadores), according to municipal reports and his sworn testimony. Months later, he became a Republican police agent, serving at Plaza de Tetuán, performing night guard duty and responding to incidents. Records from the Military Archives in Madrid show no evidence of personal violence, no confession, no admission of firing a weapon, and no witness to any of these allegations.

Paul Preston notes that Franco sought to wage war beyond the battlefield, targeting Republican officials such as police officers and prison guards. Courts routinely exaggerated or fabricated stories of Republican death squads to justify death sentences. The accusations against my grandfather fit this pattern.

On 27 July 1939, a neighbor, Fernando Llongo Llopis, filed a denuncia accusing Salvador of “countless assassinations,” theft, and participation in the killing of a priest—claims he stated he had heard from Salvador’s mother-in-law, Lucrecia Juárez Sanz. Days later, she testified under oath that she had never said such things. Yet the denunciation remained and became the backbone of the prosecution.

Llongo Llopis alleged that Salvador was a member of “Los Hijos de la Noche,” responsible for assassinations, detentions, and terrorizing right-wing residents. He accused Salvador of participating in the killing of a Guardia Civil officer, of murdering a merchant from Sarrión (Teruel), and of killing an unnamed, “very pretty,” eighteen-year-old woman. He further claimed Salvador had served as a cook for militiamen at the Convento de Santa Clara and had stolen items from the nuns.

He alleged that Salvador later volunteered for Columna n.º 13 of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), a major anarchist labor union, and that Salvador and his father-in-law, Vicente Santiago Prades, had fled Cuba due to legal trouble. None of these allegations were ever shared by my father, grandmother, or any individual who knew my grandfather. Unfortunately, the accusation did not stop with Salvador.

His brother, Tomás Gómez Soriano, a painter, was named as a member of “Los Hijos de la Noche” as well and had been held in custody alongside him since April 1939. In sworn testimony that August, Tomás denied belonging to the group, said his own wartime role had been limited to supply logistics, and insisted he had never carried a weapon or taken part in any killing. That December, the judge split his case off from Salvador’s for possible prosecution elsewhere. He was eventually found guilty of “Auxilio a la Rebelión” (Aid to the Rebellion) and sentenced to fourteen years and eight months in prison, narrowly escaping the death penalty.

A background check of Salvador produced similar claims from another neighbor and informant, Leopoldo Ferrandis Salabert. Rumors, gossip, and hearsay were welcomed as “testimony” in Francoist courts. They were enough to condemn a man to death.

By then, Salvador had been transferred to the Cárcel de El Puig, outside Valencia, where on 21 October 1939 he offered his own formal statement to the investigating judge. His case was consolidated that December with a nearly identical proceeding against another young Valencian, Gerardo López Hernández, accused of belonging to the same alleged group. The two men, tried as though they had been accomplices, would be sentenced and executed together.

On 9 February 1940, Salvador faced the Consejo de Guerra Permanente n.º 2 and was sentenced to death the same day. He was charged with Adhesión a la Rebelión (“Adherence to the Rebellion”), a blanket accusation used to execute thousands of Republicans, worsened in his case by an added finding of “dangerousness” that Francoist courts routinely attached to guarantee the harshest sentence. The trial lasted hours. The court relied on recycled allegations, many already contradicted by the record.

Additional testimony undermined the prosecution. Sergeant Delfín Jaime Cebollada, a lodger in the Gómez household, testified that he had no political relationship with Salvador. He also stated that the pistol that wounded him was one he had found during military operations, contradicting claims that it belonged to Salvador. Fellow soldiers corroborated his account. In July 1940, sworn affidavits from local members of F.E.T. y de las J.O.N.S. (Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista) attested that Salvador had protected detainees in 1936, securing assurances that they would not be harmed. None were killed.

On 27 August 1940, Salvador was executed in Paterna, Valencia. His death certificate lists no cause of death; the line is left blank. His burial was ordered in Mass Grave 126.

Paterna contains one of the largest concentrations of postwar mass graves from the Francoist dictatorship. More than 2,200 Republican prisoners were executed at the nearby El Terrer wall and buried in roughly 150 mass graves. Fosa 126, also known as La Fosa de la Tierra, contains over 240 individuals and is among the most historically significant.

The omission was deliberate. Recording a cause of death would have amounted to an admission of guilt by the regime, so the space was left blank, and the family was left with only uncertainty. My grandmother, Carmen, became a widow at thirty. With two young children and no income, she lived under the stigma of being a Republican widow. Even mourning invited suspicion. Her life was full of uncertainty, but she knew she had to survive and raise her children under a regime that had taken her husband and branded her family traitors.

For years, I believed my father and grandmother remained silent because the memories were too painful. Through my research, I learned that silence was a strategy and a means of survival for widows and orphans of executed Republicans.

The 1939 Law of Political Responsibilities, retroactive to 1934, criminalized political beliefs and associations, financially and legally destroying families linked to the Republic. It ensured that punishment continued even after the war.

A few years ago, I began to question why no one in our family had pursued my grandfather’s story. What began as an idea became an endeavor. I requested records from the Archivo General e Histórico de Defensa (General and Historic Defense Archives) in Madrid. I was thrilled when they confirmed that two files, Expediente 4908 (caja 19256/2) and Expediente 1251 (caja 18236/3), totaling over 400 pages, had been located and would be shared with me.

Interestingly, I received copies of the files on 27 August 2026, which marked the eighty-sixth anniversary of his execution on 27 August 1940. I contacted NGOs in Valencia and immersed myself in the history of the Spanish Civil War, a conflict too often treated as a footnote between World War I and World War II. Its influence on the rise of fascism is underappreciated.

As my daughter, my son-in-law, and I sat together going through the archives, we came upon my grandfather’s signature at the bottom of one of the documents. It struck me that this was likely one of the last times, if not the very last, that he ever signed his name. I have no way of knowing what was in his mind at that moment, but I am certain of one thing: he could never have imagined that nearly a hundred years later, his grandson and his great-granddaughter would be sitting over those same pages, trying to fathom the hell he must have been living through.

In my research, I did not find an anarchist or a killer. I found a man who protected detainees, who worked to support his family, and who defended the democratically elected government of Spain. Given chances to condemn others and likely save himself, he refused, choosing death instead.

The title of this essay, “The Uncertainty of Certainty,” reflects the paradox of my grandfather’s life, his unjust execution, and the lives of his descendants. War was certain; his future and that of his country, community, and family were not. His execution was certain, but not the survival of his family. My grandmother was certain she would be a widow; she was uncertain whether she could raise her children. My father grew up without a father; I can’t imagine that he truly understood why. My sister, my cousins, and I grew up with a name, but not a story.

Now, much of the uncertainty has become certainty. Silence has given way to facts. The untold story of our grandfather’s life and death will be shared not in hushed tones, but with pride. I hope to travel to Paterna with my spouse and children, as well as my sister, my cousins, and their families, to visit his resting place, pray for him and the others, and show the respect that is far too long overdue and needed to close the story.

Salvador E. Gomez Salgado is a Boston native, a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel with over 21 years of service. He holds a bachelor’s in sociology from Boston’s Suffolk University and a master’s from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Public and International Affairs. He currently resides in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Sources Cited

Archivo General e Histórico de Defensa. Expediente 4908 (caja 19256/2) and Expediente 1251 (caja 18236/3). Ministerio de Defensa, Madrid.

Casanova, Julián. The Spanish Republic and Civil War. Cambridge University Press, 2010 (online ed. 2012).

Faber, Sebastiaan. Memory Battles of the Spanish Civil War: History, Fiction, Photography. Vanderbilt University Press, 2018.

Preston, Paul. The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain. HarperPress, 2011.