Producing History in Spanish Civil War Exhumations: From the Archive to the Grave

269 Pages·2017·3.7 MB·English

by  Zahira Aragüete-Toribio (auth.)

World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence
PRODUCING HISTORY
IN SPANISH CIVIL WAR
EXHUMATIONS
From the Archive to the Grave
Zahira Aragüete-Toribio
World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence
Series Editors
Marianna Muravyeva
University of Tampere
Tampere, Finland
Raisa Maria Toivo
University of Tampere
Tampere, Finland
Palgrave’s World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence seeks to
publish research monographs, collections of scholarly essays, multi-
authored books, and Palgrave Pivots addressing themes and issues of
interdisciplinary histories of crime, criminal justice, criminal policy, cul-
ture and violence globally and on a wide chronological scale (from the
ancient to the modern period). It focuses on interdisciplinary studies,
historically contextualized, across various cultures and spaces employing
a wide range of methodologies and conceptual frameworks.
More information about this series at
http://www.springer.com/series/14383
Zahira Aragüete-Toribio
Producing History
in Spanish Civil War
Exhumations
From the Archive to the Grave
Zahira Aragüete-Toribio
University of Geneva
Geneva, Switzerland
World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence
ISBN 978-3-319-61269-0 ISBN 978-3-319-61270-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-61270-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017944590
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Cover illustration: Game pieces found in mass grave, Puebla de Alcocer, 2012. © Zahira
Aragüete Toribio
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Map of Extremadura
© Ciara O’Brien
For Maria and Piedad
A
cknowledgements
This book would not have been possible without the ongoing trust and
encouragement of many people and the support of different institutions.
My field research carried out between December 2010 and September
2012 and my Ph.D. thesis, on which this monograph is based, were part
of the project Bosnian Bones, Spanish Ghosts: Transitional Justice and
the Legal Shaping of Memory after Two Modern Conflicts, funded by the
European Research Council and led by Dr. Sari Wastell at Goldsmiths,
University of London, United Kingdom. The publication of the manu-
script could have not been possible without the support of the project
Right to Truth, Truth(s) through Rights: Mass Crimes Impunity and
Transitional Justice, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation
and led by Professor Sévane Garibian at the University of Geneva,
Switzerland. I thank both projects and their teams for allowing me to be
part of years of enriching learning and research.
The extensive fieldwork I conducted in Extremadura and my partici-
pation in different exhumations was indeed possible thanks to the col-
laboration of many associations, families and institutional initiatives. I
thank the Project for the Recovery of Historical Memory in Extremadura
(PREMHEx) and its project director until 2014, Julián Chaves Palacios,
for his warm welcome and for allowing me to follow the team’s activi-
ties. I thank its members at that time, Cayetano Ibarra Barroso, Laura
Muñoz Encinar, Candela Chaves Rodriguez, Javier Martin Bastos, and
Inés Belén Fernández, for their extreme generosity, for teaching me the
ix
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
craft of the historian and the archaeologist, and for our enlightening
conversations. I am eternally grateful to the different teams of volunteers
I collaborated with at distinct sites. Their passion, their amity, and their
laughter turned every excavation campaign into a unique experience.
In Castuera, the Association for the Memory of Castuera
Concentration Camp or AMECADEC kindly invited me to participate
in the exhumation they promoted in 2011. I thank its then president
Guillermo León Cáceres and historian Antonio López Rodriguez for
sharing their extensive knowledge about the Camp and the repression
in the area with me. This book is dedicated to the memory of Aurora
Navas Morillo and to Maria Hormeño, Marielo Gil, and Ángel Sayabera
for opening their homes and sharing their private worlds with me. In
Puebla de Alcocer, I thank the group of families that promoted the exhu-
mation carried out in the village in 2012 and the family of José Sánchez-
Paniagua for their hospitality and care. My knowledge of the history of
the war in the locality would have not been the same without the stories
of José, his sister Consuelo and their father José, and also those of Luisa
Cabanillas Bayón, Esperanza Muga Blasco, Pablo Trenado Cabanillas,
Emiliano Bayón Villarejo, Mariano, and José Gómez Mayoral, Begoña,
and Jacinto Velasco. In Garciaz, I thank the association led by Javier
Martin Bastos in 2011 and its family members for making me part of
their ongoing search for the human remains of their relatives in the vil-
lage of Zorita. In Badajoz, I am grateful for the constant help of the
Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory in Extremadura
(ARMHEx) and its president José Manuel Corbacho. I am also grateful
to José Hinojosa Durán and AMECECA and to historians José Maria
Lama and Francisco Cebrián for generously providing me with an insight
into their work and sharing their records with me. I thank Libertad
González Barroso for kindly retelling her father’s story and her family’s
biography to me.
Many colleagues have read multiple versions of the manuscript. In
the UK, I thank Sari Wastell, Roger Sansi-Roca, Victoria Goddard, and
Chris Wright for their constructive insights at different moments of this
project. I am especially indebted to Frances Pine and Paola Filippucci
for their close readings and advice. Parts of this manuscript were also
read and commented upon by Ph.D. colleagues in London. I thank
Aimee Joyce, Souad Osserain, Taras Fedirko, Akshi Singh, Katie Aston,
Stephanie Grohman, Magdalena Buchczyck, Alexandra Urdea, Gabriela
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi
Nicolescu, and William Tantam for their constant engagement and
fruitful discussions. In Spain, I am grateful for the continuous feedback
of Francisco Ferrándiz, who also allowed me to present parts of this
research at the permanent seminar Faces and Traces of Violence at the
Spanish National Research Council in March 2015. I also thank my col-
leagues Jorge Moreno Andrés and Lee Douglas for our long-term col-
laborations.
I am immensely indebted to my family and especially to my mother
Maria and my grandmother Piedad for their optimism, fortitude and
love. I am also forever grateful to my friends Clea House, Arturo Roura,
Jo Kurukchi, Martina Larsson, Michael Vine, Cristina Gallardo, David
Medja Fernández, Edu Cervera, and Antonio Gabás for listening to my
ideas, reading some of the early drafts and supporting and encouraging
this research throughout the years. Last, I thank the editors of this series,
Emily Russell and Carmel Kennedy, for overseeing the publication of the
manuscript and artist Ciara O’Brien for the illustration of the map of the
region.
Geneva, Switzerland
April 2017