At mass grave exhumation, daughter of Spanish Civil War victim seeks closure

autotldr Bot , 11 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

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COLMENAR VIEJO, Spain, Aug 13 (Reuters) - Benita Navacerrada is a 91-year-old Spanish woman with a yearning to know where her father was buried more than 80 years ago.

She hopes the answer will lie in an exhumation outside Madrid of the remains of more than 100 people who were executed by forces of late dictator Francisco Franco in 1939, in the aftermath of Spain’s Civil War.

Forensic scientists were analysing this weekend the second mass grave, located in a pathway at the cemetery, collecting skulls with signs of bullet holes and bones to genetically identify them and later hand them to their family members.

One the first policies implemented by Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez when he took office in 2018 was passing a law making it possible for relatives to identify victims who are buried in about 2,400 unmarked mass graves around the country.

The rival conservative People’s Party (PP) and far-right Vox oppose the “Law on Democratic Memory”, arguing it threatens to reopen wounds, and during the election campaign they vowed to repeal it.

Luis Perez Lara, chair of a commission in the town of San Sebastian de los Reyes promoting the exhumation at nearby Colmenar Viejo, said the goal is for relatives of those executed to be able to bury them with dignity.

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