Fernando Aroca I Sevilla, (EFE) Sevillian from San Fernando, which has closed a cycle after more than three years of work.
During this period, the remains of 1,786 retaliated by Franco’s troops have been exhumed. Today, the wounds of their families begin to heal after eight decades of suffering.
The land of the pit brings to light stories like those of Josefina (or ‘Pepita’, as she prefers to be called) and Carmen, daughters of Rafael Amado Peña, councilor of the Seville City Council for the Republican Union.
Both have recounted how their father, who was also a baker, was forcibly taken from his home in the San Julián neighborhood at dawn. They never heard from him and his death certificate does not mention his cause of death, as they have explained to EFE.
Communist Party members
Added to this testimony are others such as that of Ángel Rodríguez, who has narrated how his father, the trade unionist Miguel Rodríguez, was taken away by the Falangists while he was shaving at home. He was murdered at the age of 28, his wife was left a widow at 26, although at first he thought that his partner had managed to escape to France or Argentina.
Even younger, they took Ramón and Antonio Sánchez. His nephews, Ana and Ramón, explain that they were workers, members of the Communist Party and that they lived in Cerro del Águila, near Tamarguillo.
Ramón was assassinated in the María Luisa Park on July 22, 1936, four days after the coup d’état, and his body remained there for some time as a “reprimand” until they took him, along with many others, to Pico Reja.
His brother Antonio was also arrested a few months later, in December 1936, and ended up shot on the walls of the Seville cemetery on April 14, 1937, the same day that the Second Republic was proclaimed six years earlier. His wife, who was pregnant, gave birth eight days before his partner died.
With individual photographs of their ancestors, Ana and Ramón have claimed “what is important” about this day for which they have been “fighting hard” for years with the aim of dignifying the names of their relatives and making their stories known.
The remains of Blas Infante in Pico Reja
And, this, despite the fact that they are some of those who have not yet found positive results in the DNA tests, which are compared with the more than 400 that have been obtained from the bones found in a process that is being delayed due to the deteriorated state in which most of the remains are found.
Among the remains, the presence of members of the Riotinto mining column was confirmed a few months ago, sent from Huelva to Seville on July 18, 1936 to stop the military uprising and whose troops were victims of an ambush in Camas (Seville) to hands of the commander of the Civil Guard Gregorio Haro Lumbreras and the men under his command.
The remains of Blas Infante, considered the father of the Andalusian homeland and shot in August 1936, could also be found in Pico Reja.
In Seville, the first peninsular city conquered during the war, a great wound that had been open for more than eighty years is being closed today. Work will continue from now on in the Monument pit, located a few meters from Pico Reja. One point and followed to clarify this dark collective burial and dignify the retaliated. EFE
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