Spain’s takeover of Catalonia casts uncertainty on exhumation of Civil War mass graves

Spain’s direct rule on Catalonia following a declaration of independence casts uncertainty on the continuity of policies put forth in recent years to investigate disappearances during both the Civil War (1936-1939) and the subsequent dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939-1975), say Catalan administration sources.

The pro-independence executive in Catalonia fostered the exhumation of mass graves and created a DNA bank to collect samples from relatives of the disappeared. The creator of the bank, Roger Heredia, said that even the possibility of Madrid’s takeover putting in danger historical memory policies is “already an attack on democracy”.

“This project was returning the hope to thousands of citizens in this country,” he said. Heredia himself lost his great-grandfather in the Battle of the Ebre, the war’s deadliest. Eighty years later, the whereabouts of his corpse remain unknown.