The Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, visited Extremadura today, where he participated in an act with schoolchildren on the Constitution, in the Government Delegation; and he went to a meeting with relatives of victims of the dictatorship in the municipality of Villanueva de la Serena (Badajoz).

The minister has addressed the students of the CEIP Mirador del Cerro Gordo, whom he has encouraged to defend the rights to equality, education, housing and freedom of expression enshrined in our Constitution, on its 47th anniversary. Torres has highlighted that school is the best place to learn to value and care for our democracy.

He also wanted to explain to the children of this Extremadura center the differences between living in democracy and living in dictatorship. The minister pointed out that, during the Franco regime, not everyone and everyone had the same rights. He has also indicated that education went from being secular, free and without gender segregation in the Second Republic, to dividing boys and girls, who could not study in the same classroom during the dictatorship.

Visit to Villanueva de la Serena

The minister then went to the municipality of Villanueva de la Serena, where, between 2016 and 2024, 5 graves have been excavated in the municipal cemetery and 38 bodies of republican reprisals have been recovered.

The remains of 12 people have been analyzed and the commitment is to do so with the remaining 26. Torres has expressed the government’s desire to continue the exhumations: “We have recovered in graves, ditches and wells the remains of about 10,000 people and are likely to exhume another 10,000 people. This is a job that should be recognized by all democrats, to close the wounds of a struggle that should never have occurred, a war that our ancestors should never have lived through. And now it is time to preserve democracy and one way to preserve it, without doubt, is to give dignity, reparation, justice and non-repetition to the events that occurred then. My recognition to the associations and individuals who work for democratic memory.”

Inocencia Solomando, member of the Association of Relatives of the Memorial of Villanueva de la Serena, thanked the minister that the Ministry of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory will pay for the DNA analysis of the last 26 victims exhumed this year.