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As Spain prepares to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the first mass terror bombing of a civilian population, the German and Italian attack on Guernica during the civil war, an extraordinary battle is taking place through the obituary columns.
It began with the decision last year by the
family of Commander Virgilio Leret Ruiz, General Francisco Franco's first victim, to commemorate his death. It is a process that has brought back the language and the painful memories of a struggle that pitted the left-wing republican Government against a military-led fascist rebellion with tragic consequences.
In the years of dictatorship that followed Franco's victory in 1939, relatives of the republican dead were prevented from publishing their obituaries. Now, amid huge soul-searching in Spain over the war, the belated obituaries have dredged up long-buried accusations and enmities.
The opening shot in this reborn civil war was fired by Carlota Leret, daughter of an Army pilot executed in July 1936, when she published a half-page obituary in El Pais. The notice, costing over $12,000, read: "Commander Virgilio Leret Ruiz was a victim of Francoist terrorism. He was shot at dawn on July 18, 1936, after surrendering. As a result of a pact of silence that is unacceptable in any democratic society, Spain still has a debt of justice, truth and the memory to the victims."
Leret said: "Franco's own heroes have had many tributes and I feel that the relatives of the republican dead also have the right to remember our loved ones. The obituary signifies a scream of pain and a claim for justice."
Llani Alvarez, granddaughter of a republican captain killed days after the uprising for refusing to take part, said: "We, the losers, never really had a proper compensation for our pain. Wounds were never really healed."
Leret's obituary prompted a flurry of counter-articles using language such as "vilely assassinated by the Red hordes; he gave his life because he was reluctant to compromise his faith; they gave their lives in the name of God and Spain".
Republican obituaries contained lines such as "attacked for defending the legitimacy of the republic; killed by the Franco occupying forces; shattered by the bullets of Franco's repression".
Francisco Ferrandiz, an anthropologist studying the obituaries, said they "reflect the latent clash between the memory of the defeated and the memory of the winners".
Groups linked to the political right claim the obituaries are just a form of reopening wounds that have already healed instead of looking to the future.
Emilio Silva, president of the Commission for the Recovery of the Historic Memory, said: "Many myths have been created around this issue and it is time that we knew what really happened. There are wounds still waiting to be healed." His grandfather was killed by Franco's troops in the early days of the war.
Nuria Teson, a reporter for El Pais, said: "Spain is waking up after a long lethargy, in part thanks to the massive amount of publications on the civil war on TV, films and literature that tell 'the other side of the story'.
"The generations of the grandsons and granddaughters of the civil war generation want the truth and justice. In a way, they are using the obituaries to get just that."
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