The researchers believe that it is the largest burial of the republicans of the province

The suspicions and evidence have been confirmed. The concentration camp franco Albatera, today municipality of San Isidro, contains at least one common grave “of large dimensions” which houses the bodies of republicans repressed after the Civil War. This was announced on Saturday, the archaeologist-historian, Felipe Mejías López, during the XI Days around the concentration camp of Albatera on this occasion addressed as a topic of mass graves and the disappeared of the Dictatorship.

Mejias-Lopez is the responsible researcher of the location of mass graves in the province of Alicante of the Interuniversity Chair in Memory Democratic of the department of Justice.

The preliminary data from the study are based on a survey of the surface occupied by the concentration camp and the testimonials of owners of the land whose collaboration has been crucial for the first time it has located a mass grave from the point of view of archaeological.

The archaeologist did not want to venture on the number of bodies buried in the place, although the historian Esther Lopez, calculated on at least 200, the largest burial of republican victims of a reprisal of the province . In this sense, merely pointed Felipe Mejias “there are many bodies.” What if I exposed is that this place was one of the most repressive and dangerous dictatorship which there are no official figures of the time. “The files of the prisoners and any other documentation was destroyed or is not known until the moment. Someone wanted to not know what there step and there remain only the testimonies of the survivors,” he explained.

SHOT AND ‘DRAW’

on the contrary, if it is clear that some of the republicans retained were shot, and others killed by “the roll” which consisted in removing the prisoner from the concentration camp to kill him in another place. It also exposes that surely the vast majority of republicans died because of the harsh conditions of the detention center: By disease, thirst and hunger. “Some don’t eat anything in three or four days and the water that they drank was not good, a situation that resulted in that many were killed by chronic constipation and bowel perforation, and other, dehydrated by severe diarrhea”, stresses the researcher.

as of this time, the research opens up new avenues. A prospecting intensive using georadares and the execution of excavations with the order to exhume the bodies so that, through anthropological studies, forensic, try to identify and return the remains to their families.

This issue is still “difficult”, according to the archaeologist because there is not a complete list of the people who were locked up. “It is a matter of social justice and digging up the bodies and give dignity to the victims by the intervention of the government and the families do not have to pay out of their pocket for the work because crimes against humanity do not prescribe,” said Felipe Mejias.

Other actions to be put in place, he explained, are to protect the area occupied by the concentration camp at the municipal level and it is declared Well of Cultural Interest by the regional administration in application of the Law of Historical Memory.The Concentration Camp of Albatera is installed in a field of work of the Republic nothing more to finish the Spanish Civil War. At least 22.000 republicans went for him.

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