Exilio de dentro

Spain declared 2006 as the Year of Historic Memory.

Spain declared 2006 as the Year of Historic Memory. While the socialist government opened 600 mass graves where 30 thousands bodies are buried, several leaders of the right wing opposition party claim not to rock the boat.

In the name of national reconciliation, people in Spain came to an “oblivion pact”: the silence surrounding republicansí deaths survived Franchism and the amnesty signed in 1977 actually spawned unpunishment.

The civil society made a stand against the oblivion pact: the Association for the Recovery of Historic Memory founded by Emilio Silva in 2000, was the first important step. Important expecially for survivors, for those who did not choose the geographical exile, but who live day by day the ìexilio de dentroî, the inner exile, made of silence and fear. Important also for their offsprings, those who today unbury the deads.

Mas de las Matas, Aragon; Pozos de Caudé, Teruel; Turanzas, in the Asturias, and many others are the places where the number of the deads sometimes is just the number of the killing blows heard by a sheperd who wrote down each shot on a notebook; places where people decided that giving a name to the deads is as important as unbury the corpes, where people persist in telling what happened because they think that today it is pivotal to do it, because memory risks to disappear along with the last witnesses. Unbury the dead, thereafter, becomes the only way to bury the pain.

© Cristina Vatielli - Image from the Exilio de dentro photography project
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Valencia de Alcantara, Extremadura, Spain, 2006. On the way to the common graves of Valencia de Alcantara in Extremadura. Back cover of the book "For Whom the Bell tolls" by Ernest Hemingway.

© Cristina Vatielli - Image from the Exilio de dentro photography project
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Teruel, Pozos de Caudè, Spain 2006. Annual ceremony with the families and the unions. Between August 1936 and December 1937 over 1000 people were executed in Pozos de Caudè, and their bodies were thrown in disused pits.

© Cristina Vatielli - Image from the Exilio de dentro photography project
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Oviedo Cemetery, Spain 2006. 1330 names are carved on the black marble wall surrounding the common grave of the cemetery. Those are the names of Republicans, executed between 1936 and 1952, whose bodies were thrown in this grave, or elsewhere. Valencia de Alcantara, Extremadura, Spain 2006. Track leading to the common grave where Amaro Viera Amores, socialist mayor of Valencia de Alcantra, in September 1936 was killed and buried by the franquists. His daughter Conchita Viera has been living for 70 years at 24 kilometers from this common grave.

© Cristina Vatielli - Image from the Exilio de dentro photography project
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Campo da Rata, A Coruna, Galicia, Spain 2006. On April 14th, 2001, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Second Republic, where the republicans were executed during the "Paseso", fake walkabout, a monument was erected.

© Cristina Vatielli - Image from the Exilio de dentro photography project
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Valencia de Alcantara, Extremadura, Spain, 2006. Portraits of Conchita Viera's parents. Amado Viera Amores, lawyer, socialist mayor of Valencia de Alcantara, was 33 in 1936 when the franquists arrested him. He was killed and his body was thrown in a disused mine. After his execution, his wife, Candida Nevado Molujo never went out in the streets ever again.

© Cristina Vatielli - Image from the Exilio de dentro photography project
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Aranda de Duero, Burgos, Spain 2011.The man who located the mass graved where where were found 56 bodies of railwaymen shot by the Franquists in the 1936.

© Cristina Vatielli - Image from the Exilio de dentro photography project
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Mas de las Matas, Aragon Spain 2006. Tomb of a priest killed on the 15th of August 1936 by the Marxists in the cementery of Mas de las Matas.

© Cristina Vatielli - Image from the Exilio de dentro photography project
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Teruel, Pozos de Caudè, Spain 2006. Ana Catalan cries before the gravestone that she ordered in memory of her mother, Florentina Tregon Villaroya. She is beside the pit where her mother's body was thrown together with the bodies of over 1000 republicans executed and buried here between August 1936 and December 1937.

© Cristina Vatielli - Image from the Exilio de dentro photography project
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Teruel, Pozos de Caudè, Spain 2006. Pablo Marco Sancho during the celebrations of the 1st of May 2006. He is fighting to open the common grave where his father, Pablo Marco Rando, officer of the republican army, was buried in September 1936.

© Cristina Vatielli - Asturie, Spain, 2006. Spain map.
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Asturie, Spain, 2006. Spain map.

© Cristina Vatielli - Image from the Exilio de dentro photography project
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Valencia de Alcantara, Extremadura, Spain 2006. Track leading to the common grave where Amaro Viera Amores, socialist mayor of Valencia de Alcantra, in September 1936 was killed and buried by the franquists. His daughter Conchita Viera has been living for 70 years at 24 kilometers from this common grave.

© Cristina Vatielli - Image from the Exilio de dentro photography project
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Aranda de Duero, Burgos, Spain 2011. Exhumation of a mass grave where were found 56 bodies of railwaymen shot by the Franquists in the 1936.

© Cristina Vatielli - Image from the Exilio de dentro photography project
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A Fonsagrada, Galicia, Spain 2006. David Alvarez Carballado, communist militant, exiled and prisoner, remembers by heart the places where Republicans from Galice were killed and clandestinly buried.

© Cristina Vatielli - Image from the Exilio de dentro photography project
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Valencia de Alcantara, Extremadura Spain, 2006. Conchita Viera has lived for 70 years at 24 kilometers from the common grave where her father, Amaro Viera Amores, socialist mayor of Valencia de Alcantara, in September 1936 was killed and buried by the franquists

© Cristina Vatielli - Image from the Exilio de dentro photography project
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Aranda de Duero, Burgos, Spain 2011. Exhumation of a mass grave where were found 56 bodies of railwaymen shot by the Franquists in the 1936.

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