The municipality of Ribera de Urgellet (Alt Urgell) buried this Wednesday the remains of an unidentified Republican soldier who was shot dead while fleeing the front in the Civil War. His remains have been buried in a columbarium in the Adrall cemetery.
As explained by its mayor, Josefina Lladós, his remains were located a couple of years ago as part of renovation works on an old fiber cement pipe that ran from a water intake to the Garbes reservoir. Although it has not been possible to identify the person to whom they corresponded, it seems that a neighbor would have welcomed him into his house the night before he lost his life, where he would have arrived very hungry and cold. The next day, when he was leaving, he would have been discovered and shot. Now, his remains rest in a columbarium in the Adrall cemetery.
The event was attended by Antoni Travé, a resident of the town who recalled that the soldier passed by his house. Antoni Travé has indicated that “he was a short man, quite short, he looked very worried and stayed until 12 at night; The next day they said that there was a dead man, some children went to look at him and I saw that it was him, that it was the man who had been at home.”
He has also said that his father and grandparents buried him on a farm in a box, with the documentation inside a glass bottle and that they sent his family a letter from which they received a response.
The general director of Democratic Memory, Alfons Aragoneses, participated in the event, in which a panel of the Network of Memory Spaces was inaugurated.
Since these are remains that have not been identified, the corresponding protocol has been followed, which allows them to remain in the same municipality where they were located.
