Daughters of oblivion: receiving the father's bones when you are already 90 years old
The story of my great-grandfather, who disappeared in 1936, and how his daughters recovered his remains 87 years later
My grandmother was only three years old when she lost her father. Her mother was left a widow and pregnant with her younger sister, María. This event completely changed the destiny of their lives.
Silvestre Indias Carvajal, my great-grandfather, disappeared at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, in August 1936. They never knew what happened to him or where his remains ended up, beyond the rumors circulating in the village.
During the war and the subsequent dictatorship, it is estimated that between 120,000 and 150,000 people disappeared, spread across 2,567 mass graves.
The dictatorship concealed the whereabouts of the disappeared and ignored their families. The arrival of democracy in 1975 decided not to stir up the past, establishing silence and amnesty. After Franco's death, some families began to search for their relatives by their own means. The Spanish State did not assume responsibility until the year 2000. Since then, approximately 900 mass graves have been exhumed and the remains of some 13,000 people have been recovered.
Eighty-seven years later, a small piece of bone confirmed that my great-grandfather was in a well thirty-one meters deep near his village, Fira (Badajoz), with 19 other people. For more than four years, I have reconstructed the story of my great-grandfather and how his daughters recovered the remains 87 years later, thanks to the historical and democratic memory laws.
Rights that, moreover, guarantee moral reparation and the recovery of the personal and family memory of those who suffered persecution or violence during the Civil War and the dictatorship.
My great-aunt María, who had not been born when her father disappeared, was the one who, at 87 years old, provided the saliva to compare the bone remains found in the well. She was finally able to know that her father was in the well. Even so, she died a month before receiving her father's remains. She could not embrace him, neither alive nor dead.
This year, under the government of PP and Vox, the historical and democratic memory laws have been repealed in Extremadura and the rights of thousands of families are in danger.
My family's story is that of hundreds of thousands of victims and their families who still hope to know what happened to their relatives and where they are. I have compiled this story in a photobook, Daughters of Oblivion (available on my website www.roberto-palomo.com), so that we never forget how our grandmothers lived.