- The government delegate in Cantabria and the general director of Attention to the Victims of Democratic Memory visited the cemetery of Mirones where the Aranzadi society carries out the work
The Government of Spain, through the Ministry of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, promotes and finances the search, exhumation and identification of the remains of three Republican combatants who were killed in 1937 and buried in a common grave next to the parish cemetery in the town of Mirones, in the municipality of Miera.
The work, commissioned by the Government to the Heroes of the Republic Association and developed by the specialized scientific society Aranzadi, began this week in the cemetery of Mirones and seeks to give “dignity, justice and reparation” to the victims and their families.
The government delegate in Cantabria, Pedro Casares, and the general director of Attention to the Victims of Democratic Memory, Zoraida Hijosa, visited on Thursday the cemetery of Mirones together with the president of the Heroes of the Republic Association, Jorge Suárez, and the prosecutor delegate of Human Rights and Democratic Memory in the Prosecutor's Office of Cantabria, Carlos Yáñez.
Casares has detailed that in the common grave of the cemetery of Mirones is sought “three soldiers in republicans who were shot, who were killed in the Civil War in 1937” and with this search, exhumation and identification work it is about “giving them the dignity they deserve, to them and their families”.
He has indicated that the Heroes of the Republic Association asked the Government of Spain to carry out this work but, initially and on several occasions, asked the regional executive that “it has done nothing”, something that the delegate regretted because “Mrs. Buruaga said that the repeal of the Cantabrian Memory Law was not going to stop the exhumations and it was a lie”.
In addition, he has warned that in Cantabria the autonomous law is being violated because, he recalled, the Law of Historical and Democratic Memory is “fully in force” when the Constitutional Court decrees the suspension of the law of derogation of the same.
“The Government of Spain is fulfilling its obligation, fulfilling the victims, fulfilling those who were killed during the Civil War by the dictatorship of Franco’s regime,” said Casares, who has put in value all the associations that work to recover memory.
COMMITMENT TO MEMORY AND HUMAN RIGHTS
For her part, the Director General of Attention to the Victims of Democratic Memory has claimed the “firm commitment” of the Government of Spain to “memory and human rights” and has highlighted that, with works such as those carried out in Mirones, it is intended to serve “families who have been waiting 80 years to recover their loved ones”.
In the case of the common grave of Mirones, Hijosa explained that the three young republican combatants (Cecilio Romaña, Luis Portillo and Alejandro Miquelarena, neighbors of Castro Urdiales) were killed and thrown into the river, from where the neighbors of the town collected their bodies and buried them “outside” of the cemetery.
The general director of the Ministry of Democratic Memory has emphasized that recovering the bodies of these three men “has nothing to do with political ideology, it has to do with human rights and with dignifying the victims and repairing the families that have been wanting to have their relatives for so many years and ending their mourning.”
He pointed out that the Government of Spain finances this search, exhumation and identification project requested by Heroes of the Republic with more than 13,000 euros and developed by the company Aranzadi.
Finally, he has detailed that there are 150 graves in the region and has reached out to the Government of Cantabria to “collaborate” with the Government of Spain and the associations as is being done in most of the autonomous communities.