After 65 years, Franco's mass graves start to yield their dark secrets

Spain is reclaiming its own "desaparecidos", excavating mass graves of Franco's victims after more than 60 years, breaking one of the last taboos of his dictatorship.

Thousands of young Republican soldiers shot dead by nationalists in the civil war were flung into roadside ditches, and their relatives terrorised into silence. That silence persisted through 40 years of Franco's rule and more than 25 years of democracy.

But last week in the village in Piedrafita de Babia, near the Castillian town of Leon, children and grandchildren of those killed, along with elderly survivors, watched as bones, skulls, even black straw espadrilles, were turned up in unmarked graves that they had secretly revered for decades.

Isabel Gonzalez, 84, was 19 when her brother Eduardo, 22, and brother-in-law Francisco were persuaded to turn themselves in to nationalist forces who had taken over northern Spain. "They were told they had nothing to fear if they gave themselves up. But they were tricked. Within eight hours they lay dead in that ditch with 35 other comrades," she said.

The slaughter took place on 5 November 1937. Isabel has been visiting the spot since 1943, obsessed by the dream that one day her loved ones would be buried properly. "I just want to see them lying by my parents in the cemetery, instead of abandoned in this miserable ditch by the roadside," she said.

A group called the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory has been working for two years to identify and excavate mass graves which they say are dotted all over Spain.

Seven sites near Piedrafita are being excavated in search of a total of 50 people. Many remain unclaimed. But the group is convinced that, as the graves are opened, relatives will come forward. "They are still afraid," said Santiago Macias, spokesman for the association. "They've been unable to speak for 60 years and it's an effort for them to break the silence. But they will."

Piedrafita's mass grave was discovered the morning after the killings by Ricardo Suarez, now 80, who went to work in the fields as usual and was drawn by the barking of his dog to huge pools of blood by the roadside. The terrified 14-year-old alerted his family, but fear silenced them.

"If you spoke once, you never mentioned it again. That was terror. On TV they go on about Yugoslavia, Chile, Argentina ... they should ask us, we've suffered much more, and longer," the old man said.

Asuncion Alvarez, 87, whose brothers Joaquin and Porfirio surrendered and were shot that night, became so worried over the years that their fate would be forgotten that she drew a map of the spot where they lay and gave it to her children. Last week's excavations confirmed the map's accuracy.

Guided by testimonies from those who remember, Mr Macias's organisation hopes to investigate mass graves throughout Spain, and possibly even find the remains of Spain's symbol of resistance to Franco: the poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, who was shot and dumped in a trench in August 1936.