Elche has received a grant of more than 32,600 euros for the exhumation and identification of victims of the Civil War and the Dictatorship

The Councilor for Culture, Marga Antón, said that the exhumations will take place in the Old Cemetery where the bodies of those executed during the Franco regime are thought to be located

The councillor explained that, “the subsidised project allows the investigation, location, exhumation, identification and an initial anthropological study of the victims of the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship buried in the municipal cemetery of Elche, where the 14 residents of Elche, Aspe and Crevillente are buried, all of whom were shot by Franco’s  followers between July and October 1939.

The work will be carried out by a multidisciplinary team made up of archaeologists, anthropologists and researchers from the Forensic Laboratory of the Autonomous University of Madrid, with the support of the municipal archaeologist, the head of the Municipal Archive and the director of the Pedro Ibarra Chair.

The main purpose of the mission is to return all of the bodies to the next of kin.