With his hands tied behind his back and shot in the head. This is how they have found the remains of ten victims of Franco's regime in one of the many mass graves hidden in the Barraco de Víznar, in Granada, where an archaeoforensic team from the University of Granada (URG) has been carrying out work to locate those who have been retaliated against since 2021.
The bodies found are being exhumed for subsequent analysis and, in what is already the fourth campaign at this point declared a Place of Memory, 124 murdered people have been recovered so far, among which there are 32 women and a 12-year-old boy with two headshots.
The team works under the coordination of the professor of Prehistory and Archeology of the University, Francisco Carrión, whose advances have achieved that the Human Rights Prosecutor's Office has initiated the first file to investigate the events as crimes against humanity, the crimes recorded in Víznar, a decision that has been very well received by memorial associations.
The Prosecutor's Office of the Human Rights and Democratic Memory Chamber, headed by former Minister Dolores Delgado, has activated the judicial deadlines to investigate the murders recorded in Víznar in the civil war and the following years as war crimes, a decision that was demanded by the memorialists who asked to know the circumstances of the murders committed in the area as well as confirm that many of the victims were not combatants, something that highlights the “barbarism” that took place, as explained by the president of the Grenadine Association for Recovery of Historical Memory and professor at the UGR, Gil Bracero.
The historian has insisted that this analysis opens a new stage that will facilitate reparation and real justice for the families of those murdered. "The file will make it easier to take into account the stories of the forty years of repression that have been curtailed and will analyze cases of death and forced disappearance, which are crimes against humanity," he explained, adding that it will be thrown light to a part of history now silenced and that will help end “suspended mourning” for many families.
"Víznar's remains show that the victims were shot in the back of the head or forehead at close range, and this type of murder requires the action of judges, guarantors of the rule of law as they are," added Francisco Vigueras. , spokesperson for the Truth, Justice and Reparation Association of Granada, which has considered that a "necessary path" has begun.
The Barranco del Víznar has been the subject of study for 3 years, and now the team of researchers from the UGR has begun the preliminary phase of research in the graves of the Barranco del Carrizal, a space in Órgiva also declared a Place of Memory in which They are already carrying out geophysical prospecting.
They do it with the Andalusian Research Institute of Geophysics of the UGR, work that is supported by archaeological surveys and that serves as preliminary work to begin an excavation campaign in 2025.
