The anthropological and genetic analyzes confirmed, last February, that the remains found in Reus belonged to the worker tortured and killed in 1973
The Government will hand over the remains of Cipriano Martos to his family on June 3 in Huétor-Tájar (Granada), the land of origin of the anti-Franco militant who died in 1973 after ingesting sulfuric acid during an interrogation with torture at the Guardia barracks Civil in Reus (Tarragona), reports Efe.
Although the official story at the time was that he himself took the corrosive – they called it a “truth cocktail” – so as not to answer questions about his militancy or betray other comrades, the book ‘Caso Cipriano Martos: life and death of a anti-Franco militant’ (Anagram) of the journalist Roger Mateos puts in check the version of suicide circulated by the regime, which took pains to mute what was happening in the Civil Guard barracks to prevent street protests. His research has been key so that, together with the pit plan and the genetic identification program of the Generalitat, Martos was, finally, to be located. Last autumn, work began on the exhumation of the PCE militant worker in a grave in the Reus cemetery and, in January of this year, the President of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, announced that the archeological technicians had found the remains of a body compatible with the physical description of the victim.
Anthropological and genetic analyzes confirmed the past February 22 that the remains corresponded to Cipriano Martos, who was born in Andalusia and who emigrated to Catalonia at the end of the 1970s to join the anti-Franco struggle until he was arrested and savagely tortured in the summer of 1973 in Reus.
The “department” of Justice, Rights and Memory of the Generalitat will be in charge of the transfer of the remains of Martos to Andalusia and has agreed to deliver them for next June 3 in Huétor-Tajar, where the victim’s parents are buried.
The department headed by the ‘councillor’ Gemma Ubasart has already informed Antonio Martos, brother of the anti-Francoist and resident in Catalonia, that the Generalitat is “at the disposal of the family” to transfer the mortal remains to Andalusia, as his relatives wished, which they will decide “the substance and form of the act of return”, as reported by the Government in a statement.
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Born in 1942 in a group of houses within the municipality of Loja (Granada), into a family of poor peasants, Ciprinao Martos emigrated to Sabadell (Barcelona) in 1969, where he became politicized and joined the PCE (Marxist -Leninist) and the FRAP.
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Already in hiding, the party assigned him to a cell in Reus, where in August 1973 he was detained by the Civil Guard, who interrogated him for more than two days, until the ingestion of sulfuric acid forced him to be admitted to the Hospital de Sant Joan, where he died for 21 days, without his family knowing where he was.
After his death, on September 17, 1973, the Franco regime tried to silence the case, which in 2014 was included in the macro-complaint before the Argentine justice for Francoist crimes.