Spain Has More “Disappeared” People Than Chile And Argentina Put Together.

Spain Has More “Disappeared” People Than Chile And Argentina Put Together

Spain Has More “Disappeared” People Than Chile And Argentina Put Together Credit: Pixabay

Spain has more “disappeared” people than Chile And Argentina Put Together.

According to the Deputy Prime Minister of the Spanish government, Carmen Calvo, “Spain has more disappeared people than Chile and Argentina put together”.

The shocking number of disappeared people in Spain is something that the government hopes to set right. Last year Pedro Sánchez’s government made the decision to give Spanish regions 2 million euros to enable them to locate, exhume and identify those who had sadly been disappeared during Spain’s civil war. The regions were also set to be given 1 million euros to allow the work to be publicised and provide for work on the burial sites.

A shocking number of people disappeared in Spain during the Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship. Carmen Calvo explained that Spain has: “more disappeared people than Chile and Argentina combined”, when she spoke to the Financial Times.

The Spanish government hopes to locate and exhume bodies of those disappeared in the Civil War which took place between 1936-39.

She commented to the newspaper that: “We do not have the right to forget, we have the obligation to remember”. She believes that the Spanish state has the obligation to both those who were executed and also their families to carry out this process of locating bodies.

Speaking of the first time that she visited the Valley of the Fallen, she commented that: “I saw a place built with forced labour for the glorification of a dictator”,

She went on to add that: “It gave me a feeling of impotence”.

Calvo hopes that legislation which has been proposed by the government: “will make the recovery of bodies from mass graves not only a right of the families but an obligation of the state”. This move has seen some criticism in Spain though, especially from judges.

It is also planned that the teaching of the Civil War in Spain will change. Calvo pointed out that: “The state has an obligation to ensure that these truths are part of people’s education,”

She went on to add that: “How can anyone politically defend the fact that people don’t know?


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Alex
Written by

Alex Glenn

Originally from the UK, Alex is based in Almeria and is a web reporter for The Euro Weekly News covering international and Spanish national news. Got a news story you want to share? Then get in touch at editorial@euroweeklynews.com.

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