Slaughter at the summit

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MONTGO MASSIF: Ghosts of the Civil War still linger.

DESCENDANTS of victims of one of the Spanish Civil War’s most barbaric atrocities paid tribute to the deceased and laid flowers at their execution site on the Montgo massif in Javea.  

Among the many mass killings perpetrated during the war, the murder of 21 Denia residents who were thrown down a 70 metre chasm from the summit, is one of the darkest in the Costa Blanca’s collective memory. 

The crime occurred on the evening of November 2 1936 and relatives of those killed then have visited the site since the 1990s when a plaque was placed there inscribed with the names of the 13 victims since identified. 

Little is known about the incident, but it is believed that out-of-control leftist forces allied with the Republicans were behind the murders. The scale of the atrocity went unparalleled in the Costa Blanca until 52 Republicans were shot dead on official orders to mark the end of the war in 1939. 

The shootings are publicly marked with every year in Denia with intense passion. By contrast, remembrance of the Montgo dead is a far more solemn, an almost forgotten affair. 

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