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ARCHIVED - Two rusty rings in Andalusian mass grave identify Cartagena victim of Spanish Civil War reprisal execution
Alberto García Martínez was executed in 1940 in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War
Over 80 years after the end of the Spanish Civil War the story of a native of Cartagena who was shot in Cádiz for remaining loyal to his Republican ideals has come to light, following the discovery of two rusty rings found in a mass grave in the cemetery of San Fernando, in the province of Cádiz (Andalucía).
Engraved on the rings were the names Dionisia and Alberto, and they have been traced to Alberto García Martínez and his wife Dionisia after a lengthy investigation by the local Amede organization in San Fernando, which works to preserve the democratic, social and political memory of the locality.
Amede, La Asociación por la Recuperación de la Memoria Democrática, Social y Política de San Fernando comprises family members of those who died in the retaliations of the Franco regime, and various social groups and independent persons. They state that their objectives are two: locate, exhume and identify the victims of the Franco regime in San Fernando and recover their memory and dignity.
This group has been excavating mass graves in the cemetery since 2017, convinced that the remains of 229 people executed during and after the Civil War between 1936 and 1940 are buried there. So far they have found evidence of 108 such burials but Alberto García is only the third to have been provisionally identified pending confirmation by DNA testing.
This clearly illustrates the difficulties in identifying the deceased over three quarters of a century after they were buried, and in the case of Sr García Martínez it has been made possible only by the two rings bearing his name and that of his wife, which he was wearing on the index finger of his right hand. He was executed by firing squad for his political beliefs at 6.00 in the morning on 18th June 1940, after the war had ended but during a period of continuing reprisals and revenge killings throughout the country.
After Amede had found the rings they were able to identify Alberto by reference to a book compiled in 1992 by local San Fernando resident José Casado Montado, listing the executions carried out by Franco’s troops in the city, with the names of the victims including the local Mayor and his three children. Sr Casado had gleaned much of his information from another volume held in the main church of the town, where priests had secretly written down the details of all executions on the day when they occurred.
In order to consult this volume José Casado himself worked in secret, claiming that he was consulting the background of the brotherhoods which organize the Easter Week processions in San Fernando.
Among the executions he found was that of Alberto García Martínez, a 43-year-old corporal and boilerman on the ship “Almirante Valdés”, together with his address and the fact that he left a 9-year-old daughter and a 17-month-old son. Why the priests kept such a record is hard to guess; their only role in the executions was to take confession and offer Holy Communion to those who were about to die.
The Admiral Valdés was one of the navy ships which remained loyal to the Republic in the conflict, and it is known that it set sail from Cartagena on 5th March for Tunisia before sailing to Cádiz. Most probably the crew sailed to Tunisia to surrender, realizing that their cause was lost, and were hoodwinked into sailing on to Cádiz, where they were interned in the concentration camp of Rota.
18 crew on the vessel were from Cartagena and all were executed.
As a result of the work carried out by Amede in San Fernando one of Alberto García’s grandchildren has been traced and notified, and in recent weeks four other families of crew members on the Almirante Valdés and the Sánchez Barcáiztegui have also learnt of the last resting places of their forefathers.
Meanwhile, the group continues its excavation in the cemetery but faces an acute lack of funding from the Town Hall, the provincial government delegation in Cádiz and the regional government of Andalucía. Those taking part are almost all working for free as volunteers and the little funding received is barely enough to cover costs, as although activities within the Historic Memory Law are supported by central and regional government funding, the cost of carrying out this work far exceeds the money available.
For the volunteers, the preservation of the memory of those who lost their lives during and after the Civil War has to be payment enough.