Extremadura: Behind the material traces of Franco’s repression

Laura Muñoz Encinar,Julián Chaves Palacios

doi:10.3989/chdj.2014.020

Laura Muñoz Encinar, Julián Chaves Palacios

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.020

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Abstract

After the failed coup d’etat of July 17 th , 1936 and after the start of the Spanish Civil War that followed it, rebels carried out a repressive strategy based on the execution of thousands of people as a key tool of social control. The socialization of fear and terror through humiliation, killing and disappearance would become the main strategy employed throughout the war and the post-war period. In this context, perpetrators would exercise repressive practices on victims and their bodies. As a result, countless mass graves were opened in order to hide the bodies of victims. In the region of Extremadura, these mass graves have been investigated through the application of archeology and physical anthropology as disciplines of research and historical knowledge production. The exhumations, have given us a diachronic point of view of the repressive strategies developed, associated with different contexts between 1936 and 1946. Analyses of mass executions linked to rebels’ occupation of territories in this region, systematic rearguard killings in occupied areas, elimination procedures carried out in concentration camps and prisons and the fight against the armed guerrilla during the dictatorship, are the main contributions of this article.

Highlights

Archaeology is defined as the science that studies the past through its material remains
Employing this definition of the discipline, in this article, we will put forth a study of our more recent traumatic past, those periods that correspond to the Spanish Civil War and the first part of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship
In this paper we present an analysis of the repressive strategies carried out during the Civil War and the first years of Franco dictatorship in the Extremadura region in Spain, providing a detailed study of different mass graves that correspond to different repressive contexts

Summary

Introduction

Archaeology is defined as the science that studies the past through its material remains. In this paper we present an analysis of the repressive strategies carried out during the Civil War and the first years of Franco dictatorship in the Extremadura region in Spain, providing a detailed study of different mass graves that correspond to different repressive contexts.

Results

Conclusion