for the Spain they believed to be better: in Sartaguda
Memorial Park in Sartaguda Sartaguda is a town located in the autonomous community of Navarre, Spain. In 1930 Sartaguda had 1,200 inhabitants. The successive elections had given the majority in the town first to the Republican-Socialist Conjunction (municipal and general elections of 1931), PSOE (1933) and Popular Front (1936). For this reason, there was a hard repression in the town at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War with at least 86 people killed. Among them the mayor of the PSOE Eustaquio Mangado Urbiola and the councilors Antonio Martínez Sádaba, Eusebio Moreno Mena, Ricardo Moreno Sola, Valentín Narcue Moreno and Benigno Oteiza Viguera. On 9th September 1936, numerous men were called to the town square to volunteer for the General Sanjurjo Flag of the Spanish Legion. 45 of these “volunteers” were executd between 2 and 4 October. This bloody repression caused that in the future the town was denominated "the Town of the Widows". Sartaguda houses a Memorial Park, which was inaugurated on 10 May 2008. El Parque de la Memoria is a monument to the victims of Navarre due to the 1936 military coup against the Second Republic and the subsequent civil war. According to the official website of Parque de la Memoria “El Parque de la Memoria started as a citizens’ iniciative through historical memory associations, with untold collaboration from relatives of the victims and anonymous citizens. The institutions have yielded to the gathering force of the demand for truth, justice and reparation which have been delayed for so many years and they have finally given their support to the initiative thanks to the impulse from the citizens’ initiative. Nevertheless the economic help given by the institutions does not cover all the needs of this huge project. It is a project promoted and supported by the Asociacion Pueblo de las Viudas de Sartaguda/Alargunen Herriko Elkartea. The Association Pueblo de las Viudas/Alargunen Herriko Elkartea (Village of the Widows), in collaboration with the Navarra Association of the Relatives of Firing Squad Victims, (AFFNA 1936), are the protagonists from the Parque. Other associations and private individuals have supported and lent their weight to this work, both in its execution and in the recognition of its present and future value in promoting awareness, homage and collective memory.” These photos were taken in December 2020 and show the monuments of el Parque de la Memoria: -Atariaren beasarkada (Puerta del abrazo) by José Ramón Anda -Como una hoz atávica y mortal by Néstor Barterretxea -El muro de los asesinados with the names of the 3.4444 victims –which was being repaired- -El rincón de los escritores with texts in Spanish and Euskera by Pablo Antoñana, Bernardo Atxaga, Castillo Suárez, Jokin Muñoz, Montxo Armendáriz and José María Jimeno Jurío -Reconstrucción by Rodrigo Romero Pérez -Los acribillados en la Santa Cruzada by Joxe Ulibarrena -Sapling of the Tree of Gernika, symbol of the Basque freedoms and yearning for peace of the Basque people. More information: http://parquedelamemoria.org/