Lucía Sócam has spent years dedicating her lyrics to recounting the experiences of people who were persecuted or murdered by Franco's regime. She says that there are songs in which she has received texts, stories, poems... in which she talks about exile, the Civil War, the post-war period, the helplessness of many women, stolen children... "Chilling episodes that happened in different parts of Spain" and that the worst thing about them is that "they were true", she points out.

Her way of working is to raise awareness in society, as music is a weapon which, she says, perhaps because it is more entertaining, manages to reach a wide range of sectors. To people who perhaps have not read books on historical memory or who do not attend debates... it is a method of transmitting these stories through melodies.

For the singer-songwriter, the most serious aspect of this country's history is that to this day these acts have not been condemned, which does not allow for justice. Moreover, she believes that the silence that has been passed down from generation to generation is the result of fear and the traumas suffered by these people.

Sócam tells how, through the historical memory associations in her town, Guillena, in Seville, she discovered that her grandfather was on the list of people who had been victims of Franco's regime. She points out that she did not know that he had been in prison and that little by little she managed to get her elderly aunts "with the windows down and in a very low voice" to tell her something about it, "but not much", she says.

The music professional says that her grandfather's life was not at all easy: he fled his village, defended himself in Madrid as best he could and then was sent to the Battle of the Ebro. Later, he was arrested in Castellón and imprisoned in a concentration camp. Moreover, he was not the only member of his family to be repressed; other siblings of his grandfather were also killed, as well as a great-aunt of his for "knowing how to read", he says.

For the singer-songwriter, becoming aware of what had happened to her relatives and neighbours in her town motivated her to do her part through her compositions. In 1936, Guillena was home to 3,000 people, 200 of whom disappeared. "It is difficult to find a family without a relative who has been a victim of Franco's regime", she says.

By the restoration laboratories of the Museum of Prehistory of Valencia and L'ETNO, Museu Valencià d'Etnologia.

Activity that forms part of the cycle of cultural events organised by the Museum of Prehistory of Valencia and L'ETNO as part of the project Les fosses del franquisme. Archaeology, Anthropology and Memory.

Original title: La caja vacía (The empty box). 

Year: 2022

Director: Javier Falcó.

Duration:  60 min.

Synopsis: 

"La caja vacía" is a documentary about stolen babies with a specific case as the backbone. The case of María José Picó from Elche, with the participation of researchers, associations, technicians and Amnesty International. A documentary by Javier Falcó

NOTE: The opinions and comments expressed in this documentary by the participants are expressed in the exercise of their freedom of expression and therefore they are solely responsible for what they say. The team in charge of the direction and production of this document only collects these opinions with the aim of making them known to society. 

At the end of the projects, there will be a colloquium with the following participants:

• Javier Falcó Pérez. Director del documental La caja vacía.
• María José Picó Robles. Presidenta de la Asociación de Víctimas de Alicante (AVA).
• Soledad Luque Delgado. Presidenta de la asociación Todos los niños robados son también mis niños, profesora de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
• Esther López Barceló. Historiadora y arqueóloga, experta en Memoria Histórica, exdiputada de IU.
• Ana Martínez Pérez. (Moderadora) Antropóloga. Profesora de la URJC. Coordinadora del libro Cuando el estado es violento.

Guardons

• Award to the Best Documentary in the DOCS ALC contest of the Institut Alacantí de Cultura Juan Gil-Albert of the Diputació d'Alacant.
• Official selection in XII Trobada Hispanoamericà de Cinema i Vídeo Documental Independent "Contra el Silenci Totes les Veus" in Mexico.
• Official selection at 16 Festival Internacional de Cinema Documental de l'Uruguai ATLANTIDOC.
• Official selection at the VIII Festival Cinema Ciutadà Compromés de València.
•  Official selection at the 14th Mostra Internacional De Cinema Documental De Montaverner MON-DOC.

Activity that forms part of the cycle of cultural events organised by the Museum of Prehistory of Valencia and L'ETNO within the project The graves of Francoism. Archaeology, Anthropology and Memory.

Original title: El silencio de otros

Year: 2018

Directors: Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar.

Duration: 95 min.

Synopsis: El silencio de otros reveals the silenced struggle of the victims of the long Franco regime, who continue to seek justice to this day. Shot over six years, the film follows victims and survivors of the Franco regime as they organise the so-called "Argentinean lawsuit" and confront a "pact of forgetting" about the crimes they suffered.

Activity that forms part of the cycle of cultural events organised by the Museum of Prehistory of Valencia and L'ETNO within the project The graves of Francoism. Archaeology, Anthropology and Memory.

Original title: La trinchera infinita 

Year: 2019

Directors: Jon Garaño, Aitor Arregi, José Mari Goenaga. 

Running time: 147 min.

Cast: Antonio de la Torre, Belén Cuesta, Vicente Vergara, José Manuel Poga, Emilio Palacios.

Synopsis: Higinio and Rosa have only been married a few months when the Civil War breaks out, and his life becomes seriously threatened. With the help of his wife, he decides to use a hole dug in his own house as a temporary hiding place. The fear of possible reprisals, as well as their love for each other, condemn them to an imprisonment that will last for more than 30 years.

Joint presentation of the graphic novels:

• Dentro (Ilustropos, 2021) and Fuera (Ilustropos, 2022), by Isabel Ruiz.
• María la Jabalina (Astiberri, 2023), by Cristina Durán and Miguel Ángel Giner Bou.

The authors will be present and it will be presented by Tono Vizcaíno, curator of the exhibition Archaeology of the memory. The graves of Paterna. 

Activity framed in the cycle of the project The graves of Francoism and organised by the Museum of Prehistory and L'ETNO.

Inside. After the end of the Spanish Civil War, the Franco regime began a period of repression and revenge that lasted for forty years. Thousands of people were executed and countless others were imprisoned without trial. Women's prisons became warehouses for prisoners where extreme conditions of overcrowding, torture, hunger and deprivation of rights led to terrible situations that history tends to erase. Dentro. draws on the testimonies of the survivors, as well as research into the genocidal practices in these prisons, to represent in a series of graphic accounts what that vital resistance meant for the political prisoners of Franco's dictatorship. It also serves as a well-deserved tribute.

Outside. After the fascist military coup, women suffered the total annulment of their rights and the model of the modern woman favoured by the Second Republic was persecuted and eliminated. The idea of the angel of the home, good wife and self-sacrificing mother was promoted, and this novel attempts to dissect the different methods used to condition their lives. The Sección Femenina, Acción Católica, the Patronato de Protección de la mujer and the Auxilio Social were some of the institutions from which the re-education and domination of the female population was carried out. In this context of indoctrination and terror, women had only four options for living: connivance, silence, exile or struggle.

Isabel Ruiz Ruiz (Úbeda, 1977) is an illustrator and director of audiovisual photography. She is the creator of a collection of illustrated books aimed at giving visibility to women of reference in different artistic and cultural, literary, scientific and philosophical disciplines. In her own words, "I have a degree in Fine Arts and a diploma in Photography Direction. As an author and illustrator I have published nine titles: La estación de las hojas, the five volumes of the Colección Mujeres, Mujeres españolas, Dentro y Fuera. In recent years my work as an illustrator has focused on giving visibility to women".
________________________________________

María la Jabalina. María Pérez Lacruz, known as María la Jabalina, was the last woman murdered by Franco's regime in the Valencian Community. In 1942, aged just 25, she was shot at El Terrer, the sadly well-known wall in Paterna (Valencia). The young anarchist of the Juventudes Libertarias had grown up around the factory in Puerto de Sagunto, where the atmosphere of the workers' struggle was in the air. At the age of 18 she had the courage to enlist as a militiaman in the Columna de Hierro, where she worked as a nurse. She was probably the first woman to be wounded in the civil war. During the post-war repression she was denounced, arrested and unjustly accused of crimes she could never have committed.

Cristina Durán and Miguel Ángel Giner Bou, winners of the National Comic Prize for El día 3 (Astiberri, 2018), revive one of the many silenced stories of women who fought for peace and freedom and, in addition, they echo the deepest wish of the mother of the Javelina: that such a great injustice never falls into oblivion. María la Jabalina has been produced thanks to the initiative and support of the Department of Historical Memory of Sagunto City Council and is published in both Spanish and Valencian.

Cristina Durán (Valencia, 1970) and Miguel Ángel Giner Bou (Benetússer, Valencia, 1969) work professionally in comics and illustration through their studio LaGRÚAestudio, which they founded in 1993. Together they have published comics such as Una posibilidad (2017), Cuando no sabes qué decir (forthcoming in Andana Gráfica), El día 3, together with Laura Ballester (2018) and María la Jabalina (2023). For El día 3 they have received, among others, the Comic National Award 2019.

Esta actividad forma parte del programa de actos culturales en torno al proyecto Las fosas del franquismo y está organizada por el departamento de Memoria Democrática de la Diputació de València.

Moderadora: María Palau (periodista e investigadora) 

Integrantes de la mesa:
-       Natalia Enguix. Vicepresidenta y diputada delegada de Memoria Democrática de la Diputació de València
-       Francisco Etxeberria, antropólogo y asesor de la Secretaría General de Memoria Democrática del Ministerio de la Presidencia
-       Jesús Jurado, exsecretario general de Memòria Democràtica del Govern de les Illes Balears
-       Cristina García. Catedrática de Filosofía del Derecho en la Universitat de València. Institut Universitari de Drets Humans
-       Amparo Belmonte. Presidenta de la plataforma de Asociaciones de Familiares de Víctimas del Franquismo de las Fosas Comunes de Paterna.

Entrada gratuita. Aforo limitado. 

Activity that forms part of the cultural programme within the project The graves of Francoism. Archaeology, Anthropology and Memory.

Participants:

Teresa Llopis, teacher IES Ondara. XEIM - Network of resources within public education and Las Misiones de la Memoria.

Esther López Barceló, Aula Memoria Democrática Conselleria de Cultura.

Carlos Fuertes, Aula de Historia y memoria democrática UVEG.

Ferran Mestre, History teacher. CEFIRE of Gandia. CEFIRE Democratic Memory.

Moderator: Pepa Garcia Hernandorena, curator of the exhibition 2238 Paterna. Place of Perpetration and Memory. As part of the project The graves of Francoism.
 

The Graves of Francoism (Las fosas del Franquismo) is a project with a public service vocation that aims to promote democratic memory. Society has a moral obligation to undo the base of oblivion in order to never again repeat the most tragic episodes of our history. The project is multidisciplinary in nature, as it is approached from the perspective of archaeology, anthropology and historical memory.

The Diputación de València, with the Historical Memory Delegation, and the Department of Culture, with the Museums of Prehistory and L'ETNO, have produced two exhibitions, a publication and a programme of cultural activities, which aim to contribute to the truth, justice and reparation of the memory of the people shot in the Paterna Cemetery between 1939 and 1956. Special attention has been devoted to the victims and their families.

The exhibitions are: Archaeology of Memory. The Graves of Paterna (Arqueología de la Memoria. Las fosas de Paterna), organised by the Museum of Prehistory of Valencia, and 2238 Paterna. A place of perpetration and memory  (2238 Paterna. Lugar de perpetración y memoria), organised by L'ETNO, Museu Valencià d'Etnologia, which will help to strengthen critical thinking in the face of events that should never be repeated.

2238 Paterna. A place of perpetration and memory.

Approaching the contemporary exhumations of the graves of victims of Franco's regime from the perspective of social anthropology allows us to look beyond these graves. From this discipline, the analytical focus is placed on understanding in depth and in all its dimensions the dynamic social world that surrounds them and endows them with meaning, whether in institutional, associative or family environments.

From this point of view, exhuming involves much more than digging up bones. The view widens and allows us to introduce new agents, to move through time and space and to put ourselves in the place of those people who were murdered and humiliated by Franco's repression, as well as to walk with them along the paths of memory and oblivion.

All these issues are present in one way or another in the exhibition 2238. Paterna, Place of Perpetration and Memory, organised by L'ETNO. Through different spaces and periods, it takes us from the past to the present, from the houses and locked chests of drawers to the cemetery of Paterna and inside the graves, from the experiences of several generations to the suffering of men and women repressed for their way of thinking and living, for defending the legitimate government or for their political militancy.

In the first room (Room 2) we enter a mass grave. From inside, we are led to reflect on its existence and the reasons for the current demands for exhumations, thanks, above all, to the transmission of memory by women.

The first courtyard recreates the Paterna cemetery, showing us the spaces, the small and humble family tributes, the different political demands that have taken place there over time up to the present day.

In the second courtyard we can stop to assimilate all that we have been shown, digest the violence and fear of so many families and share the seeds of hope that encapsulate their demands.

This project is the result of the joint effort and work of many people: the curator, the person responsible for the design, the institution and its workers (restoration, conservation, communication, didactics, administration and management...). And, of course, it is the fruit of the generosity of the families who have selflessly allowed their private and intimate memory to become public heritage and collective memory.

Consult press release in the right-hand column.

Las Fosas del Franquismo is a project with a public service vocation that aims to promote democratic memory. Society has a moral obligation to undo the slab of oblivion in order to never again repeat the most tragic episodes of our history. The project is multidisciplinary in nature, as it is approached from the perspective of archaeology, anthropology and historical memory.

The Diputación de València, with the Historical Memory Delegation, and the Department of Culture, with the Museums of Prehistory and L'ETNO, have produced two exhibitions, a publication and a programme of cultural activities, which aim to contribute to the truth, justice and reparation of the memory of the people shot in the Paterna Cemetery between 1939 and 1956. Special attention has been devoted to the victims and their families.

The project Las Fosas del Franquismo. Archaeology, Anthropology and Memory, of the Diputación de València will include a programme of complementary activities throughout 2023 and the first months of 2024: conferences, round tables, presentation of publications, musical performances, scenic arts and cinema, and the inauguration of two exhibitions: Archaeology of Memory. Las fosas de Paterna, organised by the Museum of Prehistory of Valencia, and 2238 Paterna. Lugar de perpetración y memoria, organised by L'ETNO, Museu Valencià d'Etnologia, which will help to strengthen critical thinking in the face of events that should never be repeated.

Xurxo Miguel Ayán Vila (Lugo, 1976) is a Galician archaeologist and researcher. He has always been closely linked to Pobra do Brollón (Cereixa), the land of his parents. He is an archaeologist and researcher at the Landscape Archaeology Laboratory of the Padre Sarmiento Institute of Galician Studies (CSIC in Santiago de Compostela). He develops his technical work in three main areas: the assessment and correction of the archaeological impact of major public works; the enhancement of heritage; and the dissemination of archaeological knowledge. Since 2014 he has co-directed the International Brigades Archaeological Project and since 2016 he has directed the Civil War Archaeology and Heritage Socialisation Project at Monte San Pedro (Amurrio).

This conference is part of the programme of cultural activities Las fosas del Franquismo.