CROSSING CONTINENTS - Spain MARIUSA REYES: Eduardo, How many bodies do you expect to recover? EDUARDO: [translated] So far they've found twenty-nine bodies. There's another fifteen or so here in what we're looking at now and there's another grove to be started and if it's the same as this, we could be talking in the region of about seventy people. He says the difficulty here is that it's not like they normally do when they're doing Roman or medieval necropolis but here the bodies lie as they fell. Sometimes the bodies are on top of each other, the bones are intertwined. They're not laid out neatly. MARIUSA REYES: I wonder what goes through your mind when you're doing your job? EDUARDO: [translated] He says that what they've got to look for, and what they find, reality, what happens, you see the position of the bodies is what, is fundamental. For instance here there are two people, one older, one younger, who are lying embraced together. They're really trying to find out whether they, whether they were still alive when they were put in the grave, or they were dead when they were put in the grave. It's known that everybody was given a final shot to make sure that they were dead but sometimes from the position you can tell that they weren't actually dead when they were put in the grave. MARIUSA REYES: Eduardo Cristobal Villanueva is an archaeologist. His team is excavating a mass grave that's been untouched for sixty-seven years. We are on a wooded hill with pine and oak trees called Costajan, above the small town of Aranda de Duero, a hundred miles north of Madrid. Let me take you back to one of the darkest corners of Spain's history. It's summer 1936 and General Franco has just staged his coup to overthrow the left-wing republican government. His followers are killing people and tossing them into mass graves. No one quite knows how many but thirty thousand is a frequently quoted figure. Today I have come to meet the children of some of the victims lying here. Of course they are children no more but in their seventies and eighties. Carmen hasn't seen her father since she was a little girl but she hopes she might find him again here. CARMEN GONZALEZ: [translated] She says her name is Carmen Gonzalez, seventy-one, she's from Aranda and all her family were always from this area. MARIUSA REYES: Carmen, tell us the story of what happened to your relatives here. CARMEN: [translated] She says that in Aranda like the rest of Spain on 18th July 1936 civil war broke out. Her father was a municipal policeman. A couple of days after the outbreak of war, he was having a siesta, she was at home with him and they came, the Fascists came and took him out of the house, took him away, and that evening they told the family that he'd been shot. She doesn't know whether her father was a member of a political party or not. She doesn't know. She just doesn't know why but he was taken away and shot. MARIUSA REYES: Carmen, how do you remember the things? I mean you were five at the time. CARMEN: [translated] She says she remembers perfectly well, although she was only five. Two policemen came with other people dressed in the blue shirts of the Fascists and they, they just came and took her father. She ran after him but one of them tapped her on the backside and said look, look, go away. You're not going to see him again, we're going to kill him. MARIUSA REYES: Carmen is smartly dressed and appears feisty and authoritative. Manuel is more soft-mannered. He's an elderly gentleman with big warm brown eyes who lost his father, his uncle and his cousin at the same time as Carmen lost her dad. He too thinks they're buried here. MANUEL: [translated] He says that his father was a railwayman, and at the time all this happened his mother gave birth to his sister but his father was away, and when he came home he was asked to go to the police station to make a statement, and he went willingly because he thought he hadn't done anything. And Manuel and his mother went down to the police station with some food for the father's supper, and were told that he was no longer in Aranda, that they'd taken him to Burgos which is about fifty miles away. He says that the next morning when there was still this doubt as to whether his father was dead or alive, he was eight and a half, there was a road sweeper who everybody knew was in charge of burying people. So he went up to him and said look, answer me a question, is my father alive or dead? And he said look Manolillo, your father is in Costajan which they took to mean that he was still alive but of course Costajan is this grave here. He wants to make clear that he is not doing this for any kind of revenge. He doesn't want to find the person who killed him, anyway he's probably dead, the person who killed his father but that's not the point of all this. The point of all this is that this should be known by future generations as to what really happened here in Aranda, here in Spain so that it should never happen again. MARIUSA REYES: Why do you think people have kept silence for so long here in Aranda? MANUEL: [translated] He says that initially of course because of the dictatorship you couldn't talk. You risked having your throat slashed or being imprisoned and it was only really with the arrival of democracy in Spain, when people began to start thinking about it. MARIUSA REYES: But it's taken twenty-five years of democracy to be able to talk about and do something concrete about this. Why? MANUEL: [translated] He says he doesn't really know. Some people might be still frightened. Fear is what keeps people out of the vineyards as they say here locally, but the important thing is as he says is that it's now underway and we're now going to go through with this. MARIUSA REYES: The killings of 1936 show just what human nature can be like once law and order break down and people know they can get away with murder, literally. Like in Bosnia, in the 1990s, people here were shot for all sorts of reasons, not just politics. Some out of envy, some to settle old scores. One man shot his brother-in-law so his sister could inherit. But why has it taken so long to start excavating these graves, and why is the debate over the past so crucial for Spain today? That's what I want to find out in my first report in this week's Crossing Continents. A number of excavations have been happening around Spain. Most are done by volunteers and relatives. Very few have official support. This one here in Aranda de Duero is unusual in that there is a team of archaeologists doing a professional job, commissioned by the town hall. So we stepped down into the grave now and at this stage for example with this border here, are you able to tell a bit more whether it was a woman or a man and something more about it? EDUARDO: [translated] He says that you can tell clearly from this that it's a male adult and unusually with the hands tied in front. You can tell that the hands are tied because all the bones are lined up like that. It's as if he were praying but the hands are down, therefore we can tell that he had his hands tied before he was shot. MARIUSA REYES: As far as I can see here some buttons, perhaps from a shirt, right? EDUARDO: [translated] He says no, they're not shirt buttons. These are definitely buttons from items of underwear and that is part of somebody's braces. MARIUSA REYES: The dig takes three months of painstaking work. The first excavations of civil war graves were started by the Voluntary Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, founded by someone whose grandfather was killed in a town north-west of here. That same association has also organised a conference which I am about to attend. I have come to Valladolid north-west of Madrid for that conference organised by the new Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory. The purpose is to talk about the killings in the civil war and the long silence afterwards. It's been an emotional event. At times the audience has been fighting back the tears. One of the speakers here is the well-known Spanish writer Dulce Chacon. She's been talking about her latest book, La Voz Dormida or the Sleeping Voice. The book is about women's experiences in the civil war and during Franco's dictatorship and it's been very successful going to seven editions in four months. Dulce is in her forties and very striking in her shoulder-length jet black hair, bright red jacket and matching lipstick. She's agreed to meet me in a quiet room. I want to know why she's written this book now. DULCE CHACON: [translated] She says that she did it for personal reasons, not out of any sense of revenge, of reclaiming the memory of her own family because her family were right-wing, but of reclaiming that part of history that was never taught to her. It's a personal search for the truth of what really happened and it coincides with the same feeling in Spanish society generally that Spaniards have not been told the truth about what happened. They've only been told part of the truth. History has been hijacked by the victors, by the right. MARIUSA REYES: You also in your talk used a very powerful phrase. You said Spain is a country without memory, it's a sick country. Is Spain recovering its memory now then? DULCE: [translated] She says she thinks it is indeed beginning to recover that memory as a process of healing itself. That at last people who were silent for sixty years are now beginning to speak and indeed, yes, a country that loses its memory is a sick country. A country without a memory is like a man without a memory and that's got a name. It's called Alzheimer. She travels all over Spain and each place she goes, people want to come there to tell their stories. They stand up and tell what's happened to them. It's a kind of catharsis, it's a kind of healing. MARIUSA REYES: Can one interpret this trend of publishing books on this war and seminars like this one as a sign that democracy in Spain has come of age? DULCE: [translated] Well she says she wouldn't exactly talk at this precise moment of democracy being strengthened when the government is ignoring 90% of the people in deciding to go to war, when the prime minister has taken Spain to a war. It's not exactly a moment to talk about the strengthening of democracy. MARIUSA REYES: The Spanish have often taken pride in what they call the transicion modelica, or model transition between Franco's dictatorship and the current democracy. And while many agree that the transition was probably the best possible in the circumstances, there are those who argue it's far from exemplary. One of the most vocal is Vincente Navarro, a political scientist from Barcelona. He recently published a controversial book about the transition, arguing passionately that Spain is not a full democracy because the right was so powerful at the time that the new constitution was skewed to its advantage. One reason the transition was so smooth is that enough people were willing to seal the past with a pact of silence in the knowledge that atrocities had been committed on both sides. But Vincente Navarro argues that there's quite a difference between the republican and the Franco-ist atrocities. VINCENTE NAVARRO: It's true there were approximately thirty thousand people killed by the republican side but that happened immediately after the Fascist coup, but against the wishes of the republican government. The Fascist side however there are two hundred thousand people assassinated since 1939 when it ended the war and that was a systematic public policy carried by the armed forces and the Fascist party in order to establish a terror and that is what was the characteristic of the forty years of dictatorship. MARIUSA REYES: I'm in the very heart of Madrid, the Puerta del Sol or Gate of the Sun. It's a busy square, Madrid's Piccadilly Circus if you like. It is here where the biggest anti-war demonstration ended up recently. 91% of Spanish people are said to be against their government's decision to support the war in Iraq but a number of people I have spoken to here in Spain point the finger at the ruling PP or Popular Party, the Spanish conservative party, for another reason too. They are unhappy with the government's lack of support for the excavations of the civil war mass graves, and with its continuing silence on what happened. Some people even go as far as to question the PP's democratic credentials. I wonder what the PP has got to say about these allegations. So it's time to go to the Spanish Congress to meet a senior MP, Mr Gustavo de Aristegui. People accuse your party, the Popular Party, of not listening to this need and not supporting this effort to break this long silence. What do you have to say about that? GUSTAVO DE ARISTEGUI: I think that we have got to be extremely careful about that, and if there is something this government is doing right is being extremely cautious about not re-opening these very deep wounds that run very deep in the Spanish society, and that we have to preserve as a treasure the recovery of peaceful co-existence and reconciliation in Spain which I think is the most important asset that Spain has as a democracy. Open wounds cannot be healing. That is not the way of doing things and I think that is extremely dangerous and I think that that is extremely irresponsible, if I may add. MARIUSA REYES: Would that put democracy in Spain in danger? GUSTAVO: I'm not saying that. I am saying that Spanish democracy is consolidated. It has already twenty- six years of history after the first democratic election was held, and I think that this is the most important ground on which we can build an even more peaceful and solid co-existence but what I think is completely irresponsible is to try to re- open wounds that have successfully been soothed and that would not be healing, as I said before. This would put a lot more tension in the already quite tense political dialogue in Spain. What I think it can really do is jeopardise the kind of positive and balanced feelings that the Spaniards have towards our transition. MARIUSA REYES: Some people we have interviewed have accused the Popular Party not only of keeping silent about the civil war, but they also make a relationship between this issue and the fact that the prime minister Aznar has taken Spain to war against the will of the majority of people. So how democratic is this government? GUSTAVO: As democratic as any other democratic government on the face of the earth. To question the base of a democratic representative government is to question democracy itself. So yes, as you know, the majority of the society is against the war but they will be able to express their opinion about this government's ability to rule democratically in March of 2004. If they want to vote us out, they will do that and we will leave and we have an absolute majority in this house which gives us the absolute right and legitimacy to rule as we think appropriate for the interests of Spain and its people. MARIUSA REYES: Democracy in Spain does seem to be pretty well established now. The question that remains is whether digging up painful memories from the past will destabilise Spain, or whether it's a necessary step to heal old wounds and so to truly consolidate democracy. Maybe we should turn to poets instead of pundits and politicians. One poem has stayed in my mind ever since I heard it because it's such a powerful reminder of what's at stake. It's by Blas de Otero, one of Spain's leading poets from the last century. It was read to me by his widow, Sabina de la Cruz: POEM: [translated] They will call for me They will call for all of us You and you and I and we will be squeezed in a glass grinder in the face of death And you will be exposed, we'll all be exposed to being ripped apart by bullets And you know they'll come for you, for you, for me, for all of us and for you too Not even God is safe here They murdered him It's all written down, your name is ready trembling on a piece of paper That piece of paper that reads able able able or I you he But you proud people will utter the final syllables, permanent words that won't be lost in the wind MARIUSA REYES: I'm no longer in Madrid but this is still very much Spain. The Spanish are currently re-visiting another part of their past, apart from the civil war. I have just been enjoying a traditional Andalucian meal in the heart of Granada in southern Spain. The restaurant is reviving old recipes from the days when much of Spain was under Muslim or Moorish rule from the 8th to the 15th centuries. I didn't come here for the lunch however, exquisite though it was. The owners of the restaurant, a couple in their early thirties, have also revived another tradition from the Moorish days. They've opened the first new Arab baths in Spain in five hundred years. During all that time, the Arab heritage was ignored or even taboo, what with the Inquisition, strict Catholic rule and then Franco's dictatorship. But now people are slowly rediscovering their other cultural legacy and I for one can't wait to get into that bath. OK so I'm ready, swimsuit on. Through these wooden doors into the bathing area. Already in this place with the music in the background, and the sound of water and everything, you already feel in a different place. I'm going now to the bathing area, passing under an arch designed following the Moorish styles. Very intricate, carved plaster, ochre colour. The ceramic tiles that we see in the lower half of the wall are sage green, white, black and ochre which are the traditional colours that you find in tiles in North Africa. Wow, this is gorgeous! I am now in the area where the hot pool is, I believe so I'm going to put my towel down over here and I'm going to step in the hot water now. Oh no, I tell you, this one is a cold water pool! Oh my god, it's really cold, I can tell you. I'm not sure I can go all the way down. That's it. Oh my gosh. I'm going to whisper a little bit because I've just come to the place where the hot bath is and on one side there is someone giving a massage to one of the clients here so they have asked me to lower my voice. This place is a place where people come to have some quietness and peace, so I am not supposed to speak loudly. Excuse me, I'm going to step in the hot water for a moment. Oh that warm pool was pure bliss. And now I'm being spoilt because I'm still relaxing in the Arab-style teashop next door but I couldn't help wondering whether this new Arab bath aren't as much part of the health and beauty trend as a rediscovered Arab heritage. How deep does this Moorish culture revival really go? The best man to ask in Granada is Jeronimo Paez, a lawyer, who also spends a great deal of time running the respected foundation, Legacy of Al Andaluz. That was the old Muslim name for Spain which gave Andalucia its name so Jeronimo Paez is Mr Moorish heritage. He's invited me up onto the large terrace of his family's grand house. It sits just beneath the famous Alhambra fort from where it overlooks a hill covered in a tightly packed hotchpotch of white- washed houses, the old Arab neighbourhood known as the Albaicin. JERONIMO: Forty years ago it was nearly impossible in Spain to talk about the Muslim civilisation as something who belonged to us. Now there are strong feeling that we have to accept this culture, that this culture was very important for us and this cultural heritage is something who really belong to us too. MARIUSA REYES: Why is that, why was it impossible to speak of this Moorish cultural heritage forty years ago? JERONIMO: Because it was a nationalist ideology and the national ideology always try to be ethic pure, you know, and now to accept the other it means that you don’t have a nationalist ideology, you know. It means that maybe you are not so white or not so pure, you know. MARIUSA REYES: Have the Spanish felt ashamed to recognise their Arab heritage? JERONIMO: I don't think that they felt ashamed but most of them, they didn't want to recognise it. And see, here you have the Alhambra with the magnificent sensual beauty palace, much much better than the cathedral, but we were taught in the beginning when we were young that the only important thing was the cathedral. The Alhambra for us, it was not very easy to accept that this was made by the Spanish Muslim people, people who were born in Granada like I was born in Granada, but they were Muslim or they were something else you know. MARIUSA REYES: So could this really be a sign of reconciliation do you think between the two cultures? I mean this revival? JERONIMO: Of course, you know. The main thing for me now is first to know each other better. We do have to know the history, we have to know the relationship. When you see this area of this country, you see the Muslim cultural heritage in the houses, in the monuments, in the way of talking, in the language, in the agriculture, in many many little things. If you try to recognise that, you can accept the other much more easily. MARIUSA REYES: If I was to talk to people in the streets about this issue of the cultural heritage, do you think most people will feel what you feel? JERONIMO: I'm not so sure but you won't find a rejection you know. Before you could find a rejection. Now you would have like a mood where it's not against you know. 25% or 30% you can find a very open mind about that. In the rest, not, you know but before you have only 5% or 10% and now for that we are thinking that we are in the way. MARIUSA REYES: Mr Paez, thank you very much and thank you for sharing this magnificent view. It's cold up here but it's great, it's great view. JERONIMO: Well don't forget that the Arabs use a beautiful word for that, because it was the name Nassim. Nassim was the wind of the night who gives you like a very strong spirit and gives you also wish for life and a wish for poem and a wish for poetry. Now we have the Nassim MARIUSA REYES: The Nassim is like the chilly energising night breeze? JERONIMO: In a way but it's more beautiful if you say not in English, not in Spanish, if you say in Arab, Nassim. MARIUSA REYES: Nassim!