Comic book about the civil war: ‘This subject is extremely politicized, like everything in Spain’

It is September 14, 1940: a group of soldiers are neatly waiting near a wall at the military camp in Paterna, a municipality in the Spanish province of Valencia. “What are we going to do?” one soldier asks the other curiously. “No idea,” answers his comrade. “Maybe a target practice.”

A military vehicle stops in front of the group. The commander gets out and gives the order to ’empty’ the car. Fifteen republican prisoners walk in a chain to the wall. The curious soldier breaks out into a sweat. “And fire!” shouts the commander.

It’s a scene from the comic book El abismo del olvido (The Abyss of Oblivion), about the Spanish Civil War, by journalist Rodrigo Terrasa and cartoonist Paco Roca. The civil war lasted from 1936 to 1939 and ended in a years-long dictatorship under Francisco Franco, who ruled with an heavy hand until his death in 1975.

The civil war cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Spaniards, including Pepica Celda’s father. Ten years ago, Terrasa wrote a story about Celda who lost her father José during the Spanish Civil War. José was shot by Franco’s army in Paterna on September 14, 1940, because he was left-wing and that was seen as treason at the time.

Pepica received one of the last subsidies from former Prime Minister Zapatero’s (Psoe) ‘Ley de Memoria Histórica’, a law for the rehabilitation of the victims and relatives of the civil war. With the grant, Pepica was able to have her father’s remains exhumed in Paterna, where more than two thousand victims lie in mass graves. It was a promise she made to her mother. Finding her father and burying him next to her so they could rest together forever.

Race against the clock

The search for the remains became a race against time because Zapatero’s left-wing government had lost the elections and the new right-wing Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy (Partido Popular) wanted to stop all subsidies related to the civil war. “Not a single euro anymore for mass graves from the civil war,” Rajoy promised.

“The idea in creating this comic was to try to understand why digging up bones is so important for families like Pepica’s,” explains Rodrigo Terrasa. He became fascinated after the interview with Pepica in 2013 and delved into the archives together with Paco Roca.

draftsmanPaco Roca There are no images of the executions or mass graves, which makes it difficult for me

“For me, the documentation part was very difficult,” says Terrasa. “We started from Pepica, but the story also requires context and that had to be examined very carefully. Especially because the subject is very sensitive.”

Due to inadequate information, the book took more than ten years to produce. Roca: “There is no record of what happened then, there is no visual memory, there are no images of a mass grave, there are no images of what an execution looked like. That makes it difficult for me as a draftsman.”

Terrasa: “The relatives talk about what they were told. They either didn’t experience it themselves or they were very young. That does not always make the information reliable, but that was our starting point.”

Why is this subject so sensitive?

Roca: “This topic is extremely politicized, like everything in Spain. Mainly right-wing and extreme right-wing parties feel nostalgia for the dictatorship. There are also right-wing politicians who fight for democracy. But when the right-wing parties PP and Vox form a government – ​​both nationally and regionally – the first thing you see is that they cut back on subsidies that relatives of the war can use for excavations, for example.”

Terrasa: “In Spain it is often said that we should put the past to rest. The wounds do not need to be reopened. In the comic we show how fear prevailed under the dictatorship. That fear later gave way to silence.”

Roca: “No one wants to look back, some for fear that the dictatorship will return, others because it is a way to get on with life.”

journalistRodrigo Terrasa In the comic we show how fear prevailed and how it later gave way to silence

Terrasa: “And that politicization of the story from the past continues today, which is why we focus on the human part in this story, because it is easier to gain empathy. It is difficult to deny someone the dignified burial of their dead.”

“If you let go of the politics and sit in front of an eighty-year-old woman who just wants to retrieve her father’s bones, bury them with her mother’s and then bring flowers to the grave every week, then you look at the story differently . We are concerned with the humane side of the story where there is no good or bad guy. The only thing that matters are human rights.”

The title is ‘The abyss of oblivion’. Is Spain in danger of forgetting its history?

Roca: “What the Franco regime did was remove all memories of the dead. No funerals, no gravestones, mourning was forbidden. The surviving relatives were kept silent during the forty years of dictatorship and that hardly changed during democracy. These people and that piece of history were forgotten. And now it is too late for many people to exhume their relatives.”

Terrasa closely followed Pepica and other women who wanted to exhume the remains of their relatives. Ultimately, Pepica manages to retrieve her father’s remains from the mass grave. José Celda could be identified, among other things, by a strand of hair that Pepica had with her all those years and a note that was left with the bones. José Celda now rests next to his wife Manuela, Pepica’s mother. For many other surviving relatives, the chance to give family members a final dignified resting place is becoming increasingly smaller.

Terrasa: “An archaeologist explained to me that we cannot imagine how much Spain has grown in recent decades and how thousands of bodies are hidden under highways and shopping centers that will never be excavated. It shows the abnormality that exists in this country.”

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