for the Spain they believed to be better: in Zaragoza

In Zaragoza, The Torrero Cemetery, the execution site 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 execution site: “From the first moment the military uprising began in Zaragoza on the morning of 18 July 1936, the new authorities put a selective repression into effect to eliminate their political and ideological enemies. At first, in the months that followed the uprising, the detained did not appear before military tribunals or war councils and, after they were executed, their bodies were left abandoned on the banks of the Imperial canal, in the open air of Valdespartera or in the rural neighborhoods that surrounded the capital. Some months later, once the military courts were in operation, most of the executions took place at the back wall of the cemetery, next to the mausoleum of Joaquin Costa, in a ritual that was repeated time and again until August 1946. The accused came from the nearby and then newly built Torrero jail, which was opened by the dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera in October 1928, and were transported to the wall by bus in the early morning hours. A priest went with them. They were bound and placed in a row facing the wall. After the shots of the firing squad left them lying on the ground, the priest would give them absolution and administer extreme unction before the liuetenant in charge came forward and delivered the coup de grace.” These photos were taken in September 2019. More information: Casanova,J. (2010): "The Torrero cemetery: a place of memories". Zaragoza: Zaragoza City Council