The reenactment of the Battle of the Ebre - 80 years later

Eighty years ago this year, the longest, largest and bloodiest confrontation of the Spanish Civil War took place: the Battle of the Ebre.

The events planned to commemorate the anniversary of the clash kicked off today in Miravet. The town held a reenactment of the battle, which 80 years ago proved disastrous for the Republican forces.

"We want people to know about history, so that it is never repeated again," said organizers.  

In fact, the issue of recovering historical memory is back on the political agenda with the return of the Catalan government, after months of direct rule from Madrid.

In November, a Catalan government project to unearth mass graves from the Civil War period and develop of genetic archive was frozen under the terms of direct rule.

There is now hope that work will resume on recovering Catalonia's Civil War history. Before the project was put on hold, 35 bodies of soldiers who fought in the Battle of the Ebre were recovered in the town of Soleràs.

According to the archaeologists conducting the dig, there could be another hundred bodies in the site, making it the largest mass grave opened thus far. In Madrid too, Pedro Sánchez’s new Socialist government is keen to apply the proposal his party put forward in February for recovering historical memory, with “the annulling of sentences and resolutions handed down by Francoist courts” and the opening of more mass graves.