Civil war graves to remain anonymous

“Exhumation in Valle de los Caídos ruled out,” headlines ABC on the Spanish national holiday, referring to the Franco-built site near Madrid which hosts the dictator's tomb as well as the remains of close to 40,000 combatants from either side of the Spanish Civil War. The daily reports that on 6 September a team of forensic scientists sent by the government analysed the remains – “without stirring a single bone” – concluding that it was impossible to identify the bodies owing to their poor state of preservation. The scientists were sent at the request of several families of republican soldiers invoking the 2007 Historical Memory Law, which allows for the identification of the remains of republican soldiers who died in the war and the honouring of their memory. The law has sparked right-wing protests and intense political debate in Spain, with the conservative ABC deploring the recent initiative undertaken “without a court order” and “due transparency”.