for the Spain they believed to be better: in Zaragoza
In Zaragoza, The Torrero Cemetery Memorial: for the victims of violence under Franco (1936-46) According to Julián Casanova (The Torrero cemetery: a place of memories, Zaragoza City Council) “the remains of several thousand people killed during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 and under the dictatorship of Franco lie in this cemetery.” Casanova makes a presentation of Torrero cemetery as a place of memories: “We remember them today, after decades of silence and neglect, offering information about where they were executed and the graves in which they were buried. And along with that past, the memories of the victors of the Civil War also appear, who honored with monuments and commemoratives plaques only their own dead, only the “heroes and martyrs fallen in the Glorious Crusade”. They are different memories of that war and of the long post-war period- some omnipresent, while other silenced. There are six different locations that evoque the time of the forgotten and the remembered from July 1936 until November 2010”. He also makes a presentation of the "Memorial: for the victims of violence under Franco (1936-46)" , a memorial monument made by the architect Fernando Bayo and the artist Miguel Ángel Arrudi and inaugurated on 27 October 2010: “In July 1936 a significant part of the Spanish army took up arms against the republican regimen that had been democratically installed in 1931. The military uprising was victorious in the city of Zaragoza and from the first moment obedience to the law was replaced by the language of arms, disdain for human rights and the perpetration of acts of violence. After the war the executions continued for nearly another decade. In this place of remembrance, built in the spirit of democracy through the unanimous agreement of the members of the Zaragoza City Council on 25 September 2009, appear the names of 3.543 victims of that repression, 3.096 who fell during the Civil War and 447 who died in the post-war period until 20 August 1946. At first, in the months that followed the uprising, the detained did not appear before military tribunals or war council and, after they were killed, their bodies were left abandoned on the banks of the Imperial canal, in the open air of Valdespartera or in the rural neighbour hoods that surrounded the capital. A few months later with the military courts in operation, most of the executions were carried out at the back wall of this cemetery alongside the mausoleum of Joaqín Costa. Information on these victims comes from civil death registries, the Torrero cemetery registry, court records and military archives… “ These photos were taken in September 2019. More information: Casanova,J. (2010): "The Torrero cemetery: a place of memories". Zaragoza: Zaragoza City Council