The remains of three or four people thought to have been shot by the Franco regime as part of its coup to take control of Spain in 1936 have been unearthed.
A team from the University of Granada has been working since the start of April to excavate mass graves in the Barranco de Viznar, just north of the city of Granada.
They found the first human remains after a few weeks of digging, saying they could belong to three or four people shot between August and October 1936.
During the coup to overthrow the Spanish Republic, that led to the Spanish Civil War, nationalists led by Francisco Franco fought against Republicans for control of the country, and as part of that hundreds were shot and buried in mass graves.
The team say the Barranco de Viznar, a ravine between Viznar and Alfacar in Granada, is thought to be the site of one of these mass graves, housing hundreds.
It’s hoped that by excavating the site they will be able to identify the remains and help bring closer to people still searching for relatives lost during the civil war.
An interdisciplinary team led by the University of Granada (UGR) that has been working for a few weeks on the excavation of mass graves in the Barranco de Viznar
The team have located the first human remains, which could correspond to three or four people who were shot between August and October 1936
During the coup to overthrow the Spanish Republic, that led to the Spanish Civil War, nationalists led by Francisco Franco, fought against Republicans for control of the country, and as part of that hundreds were shot and buried in mass graves
To understand more about the historical context of their deaths, a project was initiated to excavate the graves and learn more about the people that were killed.
The human remains were found in a ravine within the dig site, known as sector one, where bullet shells have previously been uncovered by the Granada team.
So far they have only examined the first grave, where they expect to find up to ten bodies, all likely to have been executed due to bullets found inside the grave.
The team will take them back to the laboratory for further analysis, where they will attempt to uncover more about them, their lives and their cause of death.
Francisco Carrión, lead on the excavation project, said they are working on the remains in a bid to be able to identify their sex, age and date of death.
This lab work could also reveal pathologies and violent traumas that they may have gone through in life, with samples providing later genetic identification.
The nationalists are thought to have executed a range of political and important figures including mayors, provincial deputies and a university rector.
The field work involves excavating graves in sectors 1 and 2 of the ravine to recover any human remains, and keep working until funding runs out.
The project is funded by a €28,000 (£24,000) grant from the Ministry of the Presidency, Relations with the Courts and Democratic Memory, and a €18,000 (£15,600) from the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces.
When the money runs out, the team will prepare the site to make future excavations, including work to exhume a well used as a common grave, easier.
In a nearby area, not linked to this discovery but from around the same time, poet Frederico Garcia Lorca, an outspoken socialist, was murdered by nationalist forces, dying as a result of ‘wounds caused by an act of war’.
His remains have never been uncovered, although it is thought they could be resting in a different mass grave, similar to the one at Barranco de Viznar.
In 2017, archaeologists uncovered mass graves in the city of Valladolid, filled with the bodies of people killed by Franco’s regime.
The team say the Barranco de Viznar, a ravine between Viznar and Alfacar in Granada, is thought to be the site of one of these mass graves, housing hundreds
It’s hoped that by excavating the site they will be able to identify the remains and help bring closer to people still searching for relatives lost during the civil war
To understand more about the historical context of their deaths, a project was initiated to excavate the graves and learn more about the people that were killed
Efforts to uncover the history of these mass graves and the people killed are designed in part to shed light on the nations bloody past and bring closer to relatives still searching for family members.
These graves are believed to be among more than 2,000 mass burial sites thought to exist across Spain from the civil war.
Historians estimate as many as 500,000 combatants and civilians were killed on the Republican and Nationalist sides in the war.
The human remains were found in a ravine within the dig site, known as sector one, where bullet shells have previously been uncovered by the Granada team
The team will take them back to the laboratory for further analysis, where they will attempt to uncover more about them, their lives and their cause of death
So far they have only examined the first grave, where they expect to find up to ten bodies, all likely to have been executed due to bullets found inside the grave
After it ended, tens of thousands of Franco’s enemies were killed or imprisoned in a campaign to wipe out dissent.
The Spanish Civil War was started on July 18, 1936, when a group of officers attempted to overthrow the left-wing Popular Front government in a military coup.
This resulted in a four year tug of war between the two sides and resulted in a nation torn apart, leaving 500,000 people dead and caused an additional 450,000 to flee their homeland altogether.
General Francisco Franco led the group of right-wing nationalists who emerged victorious in 1939, purging conquered areas of any leftist opposition.
This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk