Category Archives: post-en

blog posts not directly related to new datasets included in our database – en

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A summer (Saint George’s Day) ‘de memoria’

During the summer months people usually have more time for reading. With this in mind we have decided to highlight this article which we originally published in Catalan on 22 April, just before International Book Day.

To mark this first Sant Jordi or St George’s Day since the publication of the centralised database (of victims of the Civil War and the Franco Regime by ihr.world, we wish to recommend a selection of some of the recently published books which we have come across.

Els catalans als camps nazis (Edicions 62) is a newly revised edition of the monumental work of the journalist and writer Montserrat Roig (Barcelona 1946-1991). This is based on her research over a period of three years to collect the names and reconstruct the histories of the people who, after fleeing from the repression of the Civil War, ended up in French concentration camps, from where, following the Nazi occupation of France, they were deported to Nazi extermination camps. Thirty-two years after its first publication this book is still relevant and of interest. This new edition includes a prologue by the historian Rosa Toran, of the association Amical de Mathausen.

“The Spanish who were held in the Nazi concentration camps, for whom there exists documentary records, number 9,328” according to the expert Carlos Hernández-. Of those 5,185 died, 3,809 survived and 334 are listed as disappeared.

Papeles de Plomo. Los voluntarios uruguayos en la Guerra de España (Ed. Descontrol) is a collaborative work by three writers – the anthropologist Sergio Yanes, the archaeologist Carlos Marín and the historian María Cantabrana. Their research uncovers the stories of the 80 Uruguayan volunteers who fought in the Civil War. Although it is based mainly on archive work in Spain, Uruguay, Argentina, Russia and the Netherlands and on research in newspaper archives, it also includes about thirty interviews with descendants of those who fought. This volume is the result of a research project entitled “Los voluntarios uruguayos en la Guerra Civil española”, which was funded by the Fondo Concursable para la Cultura of the Uruguayan Ministry of Culture. One of the interesting features is that many of the descendants were traced by means of the establishment of a blog entitled La columna uruguaya, where you can find a biographies of all of the volunteers.

Barcelona al servei del Nuevo Estado (Eumo Editorial) is a study by the historian Marc Gil of the purging of the officials of the Ayuntamiento (Municipal Council) of Barcelona immediately after the end of the Civil War. The author has studied the collection of over 7,000 personal case-files from the purging process which is held in the Arxiu Municipal Contemporani in Barcelona and has assembled a database from the files of the 2.361 officials whose cases were opened by the investigating judges and which were carried through to the end of the purge process. He reveals details of the declarations required from officials, who were often incited to incriminate their own colleagues. He also draws some interesting conclusions, which are accompanied by tables and graphs.

Finally, Moriren dues vegades (Lleonard Muntaner Editor) is a reconstruction of the terrible story of five volunteer Red Cross nurses who accompanied the Republican forces led by Captain Alberto Bayo in their attempt in August 1936 to retake the island of Mallorca, which had fallen to the military rebels at the outbreak of the Civil War. In the face of the superior strength of the rebels, who had been recently reinforced by Italian troops, the Republicans were finally to abandon the island.

The five nurses were behind to face their own fates – they were captured, humiliated, tortured and executed. Two of them were members of a Catalan family and sisters, Daria y Mercè Buxadé, who had been born in Mexico and who had moved to Catalonia in 1920. The author, Antoni Tugores, reconstructs their stories from documentation contributed by their families and rescues their reputations which had been blackened by lies and thus also killed by Francoist accounts. The introduction is by Llorenç Capellà, the author of the Diccionari Vermell, which was published in Palma in 1989 and which contains the biographies of hundreds of people killed during the Civil War and the post-war period.

This book is of particular interest to us because we have been following reports of the disinterment of the mass-grave of Porrores via the association Memòria de Mallorca as well as the legislative changes in the Balearic Islands which have introduced fines for the offence of displaying Francoist symbols.

¡Feliz día de Sant Jordi (verano) de memoria!

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The UN requests justice for 114.226 victims of enforced disappearance

The Working Group on Forced or Involuntary Disappearances of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights has published a devastating report on Spain, which, in the space of 144 pages, denounces the failure to comply with the recommendations which it made in its report to the Spanish government in 2014. The most regrettable aspect of this is that this has gone largely unreported by most of the Spanish media.

Innovation and Human Rights contributed to this report. The full report may be consulted here. The section which deals specifically with Spain begins on page 120. Our contributions appear on pages 170, 172, 177, 181, 203, 209 and 211. Below we have reproduced some sections in Spanish.

Especialmente preocupante resulta el constatar que la mayoría de las recomendaciones fundamentales para que los familiares de personas desaparecidas durante la Guerra Civil y la dictadura puedan investigar la suerte y el paradero de sus seres queridos, tener acceso a la verdad, a la justicia y a reparaciones no han sido plenamente implementadas, y que hasta la fecha los familiares están librados a su propia suerte. Estas observaciones resultan aún más alarmantes dado el transcurso del tiempo desde que la mayor parte de las desapariciones forzadas comenzaron a ejecutarse y la edad muy avanzada de muchos testigos y familiares. Hasta la fecha el Estado español no ha actuado con la debida urgencia y celeridad en materia de desapariciones forzadas ni ha asumido un rol de liderazgo para asegurar una política de Estado en este tema como se había recomendado en el informe de visita. [punto 33]

El Grupo de Trabajo vuelve a insistir en la importancia de que el Estado tome un rol activo en materia de exhumación y procesos de identificación de los restos para que éstos no dependan exclusivamente de algunas comunidades autónomas, así como de particulares o asociaciones privadas. [punto 38]

El Grupo de Trabajo lamenta la respuesta del Gobierno que entendería la creación de una Comisión de la verdad como una nvestigación histórica. El Grupo de Trabajo, en su comentario general sobre el derecho a la verdad en relación con las desapariciones forzadas, señaló que este derecho se refiere “al derecho a conocer los progresos y resultados de una investigación, la suerte y el paradero de las personas desaparecidas y las circunstancias de la desaparición, así como la identidad del autor o los autores de la desaparición” (A/HRC/16/48, párr. 39). Las familias de los desaparecidos en España quieren conocer la verdad sobre la suerte o el paradero de sus seres queridos. Este es un derecho absoluto de acuerdo a la Declaración y una obligación que el Estado español debería satisfacer de acuerdo al derecho internacional. [punto 41]

El Grupo de Trabajo lamenta igualmente la falta de información proveída sobre la recomendación de promover que las asociaciones de víctimas faciliten la recolección de muestras de los familiares por parte del Banco Nacional de ADN y recuerda la centralidad de éstas para la elaboración de bases de datos que sean eficaces en la búsqueda de los desaparecidos, en particular en contextos de desapariciones masivas. [punto 42]

El Grupo de Trabajo permanece preocupado frente a la falta de información suministrada luego del informe acerca de la promulgación de una ley de acceso a la información y de un marco legislativo apropiado sobre archivos para garantizar el acceso público a los mismos. En efecto, entonces se había alertado que los obstáculos presentes en el acceso a la información y a los archivos constituyen un verdadero problema para las víctimas en el proceso de obtención de la verdad. [punto 43]

El Grupo de Trabajo sigue consternado por el hecho de que hasta la fecha no se haya velado por garantizar el ejercicio de la jurisdicción de los tribunales españoles sobre los delitos de desaparición forzada ocurridos durante la Guerra Civil y la dictadura. Se observa
con preocupación la permanencia de un patrón de impunidad basado en una serie de factores y argumentos contrarios a los principios que emergen de las obligaciones internacionales de España, incluida la Declaración para la protección de todas las personas contra las desapariciones forzadas. [punto 44]

Considerando los impedimentos para llevar a la justicia casos de desapariciones forzadas cometidos durante la Guerra Civil y el franquismo en España, el Grupo de Trabajo permanece preocupado por la información sobre constantes obstrucciones al procedimiento judicial excepcional llevado a cabo por la justicia argentina (Juzgado Nacional en lo Criminal y Correccional Federal nº1 de la República Argentina). La apertura reciente de una investigación en México por un caso de desaparición forzada cometido en España durante el franquismo representa otra oportunidad para que España preste y fortalezca el auxilio judicial, incluyendo el suministro de todas las pruebas que obren en su poder, en lo que respecta a cualquier procedimiento penal relativo a delitos de desaparición forzada que se lleve a cabo en cualquier país por casos de desapariciones forzadas en España. [punto 45]

Igualmente, la Asociación Española para el Derecho Internacional de los Derechos Humanos (AEDIDH) destaca:

El Gobierno español rechaza asumir sus obligaciones internacionales en materia de búsqueda de personas desaparecidas, incluso cuando media denuncia de familiares de la víctima. Los familiares cuentan únicamente con la solidaridad de las asociaciones para la recuperación de la memoria histórica, que funcionan con los recursos de los propios familiares, ya que no reciben ningún apoyo estatal en la búsqueda de personas desaparecidas. Estimamos que hay 150.000 personas desaparecidas durante la guerra civil y posterior represión franquista (incluidos 30.000 bebés o menores cuya identidad fue alterada y que fueron vendidos o dados en adopción a familias adictas al régimen franquista, para proceder a su reeducación). Excepcionalmente las familiares de las victimas reciben apoyo de instituciones locales y regionales (ayuntamientos, gobiernos de Comunidades autónomas) que no esté controladas por el Partido Popular. Ej.: ciudades como Madrid, Barcelona, Vitoria, Valencia. Y Comunidades autónomas como País Vasco, Navarra, Cataluña y Andalucía.)

Y así lo explica también en el artículo  La ONU censura a España por no cumplir con sus recomendaciones en materia de desapariciones forzadas

La cifra de 114.226 víctimas proviene de la Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (ARMH), que en el informe dice:

“Desde el año 2011, concretamente, en la Orden PRE/809/2011, de 4 de abril de 2011, el Gobierno Español no ha destinado partida presupuestaria alguna para actividades relacionadas con la recuperación de la Memoria Histórica y por ende a la búsqueda de personas desaparecidas durante la dictadura franquista.”

También participa Marc Antoni Malagarriga, uno de los impulsores del Banco de ADN en Catalunya para que familiares de víctimas de desaparición forzada puedan depositar muestras que faciliten la identificación de restos encontrados en fosas, creado en 2011 y ahora cedido a la Generalitat. Podéis consultar este post para saber más. En este informe del Grupo de Trabajo sobre desapariciones forzadas o involuntarias del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas por los Derechos Humanos, Malagarriga denuncia:

“La principal prueba que demuestra la dejadez en la prioridad y urgencia de identificar a los desaparecidos, consiste en ver que las muestras de los donantes genéticos del Banco de ADN en Catalunya (en junio de 2011 se tomaron las primeras muestras), no han sido utilizadas aún para ningún cotejo de datos con los restos ya exhumados en este territorio. Hay un mínimo de 150 cuerpos de víctimas exhumadas que tendrían que ser comparadas exhaustivamente con las más de 500 muestras que ahora mismo ya existen sumando los dos bancos públicos catalanes (UB+VHIR). Nótese que más del 90% de las familias de los desaparecidos de este territorio, no sabemos por donde debemos empezar a buscar.”

Foto Exhumación de la ARMH by FCPB CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 via Wikimedia Commons

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The Catalan Parliament Approves the Annulment of the Political Trials of the Franco Regime

A plenary session of the Catalan Parliament has approved the introduction of a bill which would provide legal restoration for the victims of the Franco regime.

The purpose of this bill is to remove the legality of all of the “summary courts martial and of the sentences passed by them” for political motives in Catalonia under the Francoist regime.
This decision was made during the week in which the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture was celebrated.

The bill was introduced into the Catalan parliament by the following parties: Junts pel Sí (JxS), Catalunya Sí que es Pot (CSP) y Candidatura d’Unitat Popular – Crida Constituent (CUP-CC) and the Business Committee of the Parliament gave approval for it to begin its legislative path on 24 May 2016. The text of the original draft is available on pages 2-4 of the following document:

proposicio-llei-judicis-franquisme

The two articles of the bill are as follows:

Article 1

It is hereby declared null and void any judicial ruling made by all of the summary courts martial and any sentences imposed as a consequence, where made for political purposes, in Catalonia by the Francoist regime under the following: the Proclamation of 28 July 1936; the Decree of 31 August 1936; Decree No. 55 of 1 November 1936; the Law of 2 March 1943; the Law of 18 April 1947; Decree 1794/60 of 21 September; and Decree Law 10/75, of 26 August.

Article 2

In accordance with this law, the Department of Justice of the Generalitat of Catalonia will issue a certificate confirming the annulment of the court procedure and any sentences resulting therefrom on request from those accused or from their families.

Once introduced, proposed bills go through a long procedure through the Catalan Parliament before becoming law.

 

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Victory for Ascensión Mendieta

In 2010 the Guadalajara branch of the  Izquierda Unida party published a list of the hundreds of victims of the Francoist repression in the province.The list included the names of 839 people who were shot. Of these 217 were executed in the city of Guadalajara itself: 69 of these were natives of the province and the remaining 148 came from other provinces.  Ihr.world aims to use documents such as this list, wherever possible supported by references to the archives, to create a central database of the victims of the Civil War and the subsequent Franco regime.

At the age of thirteen Ascensión Mendieta, the daughter of one of the men on this list, opened the door of her home because someone was knocking. A group of men took her father away and executed him. She never saw him again and has spent her life taking flowers to the city cemetery, knowing that her father’s body had been thrown into a mass grave there. Since 2013 she has been fighting to recover the remains of her father; her efforts have finally been successful.

Timoteo Mendieta, who worked as a butcher, was shot on 15 November 1939 after being tried by a court martial on charges of having belonged to the Socialist UGT trade union and of having been ‘an accomplice to rebellion’. He left behind a widow and seven children. Later a wall was built in the cemetery to prevent families such as the Mendietas gaining access to the mass grave. This wall was only demolished in 1979, four years after the death of Franco.

The Spanish justice system refused to allow Ascensión Mendieta to exhume her father’s corpse. Blocked in this way, she flew to Buenos Aires, celebrating her 88th birthday on the flight, to testify before the Argentine judge María Servini in what has become known as the  “Argentine lawsuit”.

As a result of this, Ascensión Mendieta has become the first descendent of a victim of execution by the Francoist state to gain the right to exhume the remains of one of their relatives. For the first time also the descendent of such a victim has been able prove before a judicial system (in this case an Argentine court under universal justice) using documentary evidence – as opposed to DNA evidence – what happened to him, that he was executed, thrown into a mass grave and that his relatives were prevented from gaining access to his remains. Such cases are not permitted in Spain as a result of the 1977 Amnesty Law. In the words of the lawyer Ana Messuti, interviewed on SER radio, the role of the courts in Guadalajara in accepting the ruling of the Argentine judge has been of fundamental importance.

Few Spanish media outlets have followed this story. Among those which have are the TV channel La Sexta and the newspapers, Público and eldiario.es:

For photos relating to this case go to flickr of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH) . The association financed the two exhumations in Guadalajara cemetery: in grave no. 1 in January 2016, which proved negative, and in grave no. 2, last May, which proved positive. There is also a photo of the chief Justice of Guadalajara greeting Ascensión Mendieta.

ARMH is a non-governmental organisation which receives no state support. The most important contribution for this exhumation was provided by an electricians’ union from Norway which since 2014 has donated 50,000 euros.

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Digital Journalism from the Archives

On Thursday 25 May we continued with our work with the archives. As users of new technology and digital platforms to widen access to historical documents, we attended a day-long workshop Els arxius històrics en l’entorn digital (Historical Archives in the Digital Age) which is being organised to celebrate the centenary of the Arxiu Histórico de Barcelona.

We participated in a session on the representation and visualization of data drawn from historical sources.

In addition to presenting our project of developing a centralised database listing the victims of the Spanish Civil War, on which we are currently working, we will be discussing Eight Hundred Days Under Bombardment, our project originally produced for Barcelona Televisió. This includes an audio-visual summary of the bombardment of Barcelona in 1937-1938 as well as an interactive map of air-raid shelters and of sites where bombs fell.

Captura de pantalla 2017-05-16 a la(s) 22.45.36

Following changes at Barcelona Televisió this is currently only available in an Italian version. Perhaps because, as they say in Spanish ‘nobody is a prophet in their own country,’ Eight Hundred Days Under Bombardment can therefore be viewed on the website of the exhibition Catalogna Bombardata, which has been shown in nearly 70 cities and towns in Italy, but not in its original Catalan version.

Here is the programme of the day:

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The Forgotten Prison (Forgotten until when?)

During the research on the Spanish Civil War which Innovation and Human Rights has been carrying out for the last few months we have found interesting sources which we plan to share here. One of them is the major online work on Las Corts Prison (La Prisón de las Corts). This women’s prison which stood in Avenida Diagonal is marked only by a sad plaque on the facade of Diagonal branch El Corte Inglés.

Among the many women imprisoned here in the period after the Civil War was Tomasa Cuevas (1917-2007), author of several books on the experiences of women prisoners and on the anti-Franco resistance, who was awarded the Creu de Sant Jordi by the Catalan government in 2004. At the moment the city of Barcelona has placed a plaque to her in a Civic Centre in the neighbourhood of Las Corts. If you follow the links below you can read

a summary of her life,

as well as her own testimony and

her obituary

These will enable you to draw your own conclusions as to whether you think the city should speed up the long-delayed process of providing a permanent monument as a more fitting tribute to her as demanded by ACME (Associació per la Cultura i la Memòria) and other organisations.

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The future is now

Innovation & Human Rights is starting a blog to publicise interesting new initiatives and to share our work.

One of our projects is #GuerraCivil #opendata: this will be a central database of disappeared persons and victims of the Civil War, based, wherever possible, on specific documentary sources. In this we enjoy the cooperation and support of the Associació d’Arxivers i Gestors Documentals de Catalunya. We aim to base this on material drawn from the widest possible range of available sources documenting the deaths which occurred as a result of the Civil War and the Franco era.

Therefore we were present at the XVI Congrès d’Arxivística i Gestió de Documents de Catalunya held in Reus between May 4th and May 6th with a major article in the review “Lligall” in which this project is further explained. This article will be published soon on our website.

The availability of archives and open access to them are of fundamental importance: for democracy, for transparency, for open government and for high quality historical research. In the case of documentation related to the Civil War and the repression which followed, such access may also be regarded as a debt owed to the descendants of the victims and to society as a whole.

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Summary Military Proceedings

Military Justice in the Spanish Civil War and under the Franco Dictatorship (1936-1980)

The military coup of 18 July 1936 led to a Civil War which lasted until 1 April 1939. The victorious Nationalists, led by General Franco, established a dictatorship which continued until after Franco’s death in November 1975. In those years, Military Justice was applied also to civilians.

We calculate that in the whole of Spain, military judicial proceedings (usually known as sumarísimos) were opened on over one million cases between 1937 and 1978, although no precise figures exist. So far we have included 485,136 records of such proceedings from 11 Spanish provinces. In Catalonia alone the figure was around 70,000, as a result of which 3,362 people were executed, the last of these in 1975. Follow this link  to gain access to the IHR central database.

About eight percent, exactly 5,502 proceedings were against women, and seventeen of them were executed. Read about them in Summary Military Proceedings: The Repression against Women in Catalonia .

What were the summary military judicial proceedings?

The summary military judicial proceedings, known in Spanish as sumarísimos, were the only form of official justice which applied once the Spanish Civil War had ended. They became one of the most important instruments by which the post-war repression was carried out. Under this system cases began either in response to a denunciation or as a result of the official actions of the police forces. The Military Authorities were responsible throughout – from the first investigations right through to the execution of the sentence.

The testimonies and reports provided by la Falange – the single party of the regime-, the Civil Guard and the municipal council played a decisive role in the investigations. While the investigation was carried out, those accused could be detained or imprisoned for years without knowledge of why they had been detained and without procedural guarantees such as: the legality of their detention, the presumption of innocence, equality before the law or the right to legal defence.

If the decision was made to proceed to trial, a Consejo de Guerra (military judicial tribunal) was established. In Catalonia 60,561 Consejos de Guerra were held between 1937 and 1978, according to the data [ see the data here].  In the majority of cases the Consejo adjudicated on what was called a ‘causa acumulada’  – a trial of a group of accused, whose cases at times bore no relation to each other. The defence lawyer was always a military officer – at least until 1944 – who was only given access to the summary of the case one or two days before the court proceedings.

In Catalonia the Consejos de Guerra were held in the form of a public hearing in the Gobierno Militar de Barcelona (the Military Government Headquarters). Consejos de Guerra were also held in a number of other towns including Terrassa, Manresa, Mataró and Vic. Divisional courts were also established in Girona and Tarragona, the latter of which also covered the province of Lleida.

Once the Consejo de Guerra had been held, the sentence was reported to the auditor de guerra, an officer who gave his approval, and then to the juez militar permanente, another officer whose role was to implement the sentence once it had been ratified by higher military authorities. In cases where the death sentence had been passed, this was not carried out until the Captain-General of the Military Region or Franco himself had signed his approval and had sent his authorization, known as “the enterado” (meaning “informed or aware”).

Photo: Barcelona Central Prison: La cárcel Modelo (1941) Author: Pérez de Rozas – Arxiu Fotogràfic de Barcelona.