Exhuming the defeat: Mass graves of the civil war in 21st-century Spain

Abstract

Based on a local case study of the exhumation of two mass graves in a small village, conducted eight years apart, I address the transformation of Civil War (1936-1939) disinterments in Spain over the last decade. The sudden visibility of skeletons of civilians executed by Franco's paramilitary in the public sphere has triggered heated debates both about how to handle them in a consolidated democratic state and what to make of controversial judicial and institutional initiatives. The particularity of Spain's «human rights outsourcing model» regarding Civil War crimes is placed in comparative perspective within the framework of transnational human rights discourses and practices.