Chasing the Ghosts of Franco

Seventy-five years after a dictator’s reign of terror left 120,000 people buried in mass graves, the citizens of Spain are determined to dig up their own worst memories.

In the summer of 1936, a fascist military coup led by Francisco Franco put an end to the democratic Spanish Republic that had been established in 1931. During and after the Spanish Civil War, which began in 1936 and ended in 1939, more than 120,000 people were slaughtered by Franco’s forces and buried alongside roads and in fields. These people did not fight on the battlefield; they were simply arrested and killed for having political ideas that conflicted with those who led the fascist uprising. School teachers, farmers, doctors and laborers were all executed and buried in mass graves.