Two messages from the Madrid City Council have shaken the board of the neighborhood struggle in the Montecarmelo neighborhood, where the municipal administration is planning the construction of a garbage canton and where, in addition, it has been warned that there could be a mass grave underneath. Civil war. On the one hand, the mayor, José Luis Martínez Almeida, has assured that on the plot where the cleaning facility will be built there is no indication that there is a burial site with the bodies of 451 international brigade members. “In the footprint of the site where the placement of the canton is planned, there is no type of evidence on which there has been anomalous movement of earth that would indicate that there may be some type of remains,” Almeida said on Thursday in a press conference, in reference to the results of the study that the council had hired to verify whether or not there is something under the soil of the plot. Then, he clarified that “in an adjacent plot” “an anomalous movement of earth” was detected, which, at the moment, it is not known what it could correspond to.
This announcement has disconcerted neighborhood associations and adds to another one made by José Antonio Martínez Páramo, head of the Delegated Cleaning Area, during the plenary session of the Fuencarral district on Wednesday afternoon. Martínez pointed out that the contracted company, Gama Geofisica SL, had not delivered a definitive report but rather “raw data” and that now, the Cleaning Directorate is writing, on its own, the final report. “This week or the next it will be finished. What the contractor has delivered is the raw data, which then has to draw up the conclusions. [Universidad] Complutense and the General Directorate of Cleaning,” Martínez assured during the plenary session.
Well, you heard wrong. What has been said is that with the data from the UCM report that showed heterogeneities, and with the data that the Georadar captured, the General Directorate of Cleaning is preparing the final report. I have explained that. Greetings
— José A Mtnez Páramo (@Mtnezparamo) June 12, 2024
The statements by the mayor and the director of Cleaning come after two weeks of silence after EL PAÍS published that the georadar study hired by Cibeles to verify or rule out the presence of said mass grave yielded results “highly compatible” with a burial that It could contain human bones. They have broken the silence, however, with a series of contradictory statements that make the Montecarmelo Neighborhood Association and the No Al Cantón Platform suspect that something is not going well in the process.
On May 28, when the news was published in EL PAÍS, the mayor said “he did not know the content of the report” and whether it was definitive; The next day, the Urban Planning delegate, Borja Carabante, assured that they had carried out a study using georadar and that they would see the conclusions once “the technical services” analyzed the data. Carabante promised that the “company report” would be shared with the Ministry of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory and with neighbors.
Now, both messages have changed and make the neighborhood distrustful. To begin with, the head of Cleaning stated on June 12 that there is no finished report and that there is only raw data from Gama Geofisica SL. However, knowledgeable sources have assured this newspaper that the report is not a raw document, but a final report, with conclusions and even with the recommendation of an archaeological study ―which involves digging the earth― to confirm if what is there are human bones. Hours later, at the press conference, the mayor assured that they had received “the georadar report” and that it was known that the “earth movements” had been detected in an “adjacent plot.”
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Gama Geofisica SL was contracted, for a value of 16,550 euros, to work on plot 26.2b, the same one that, according to official documentation from the Urban Planning Area, was requested to build the canton and a base for the Urgent Cleaning Service (Selur) . In addition, close sources have confirmed to EL PAÍS that the company hired to pass the georadar and the tomograph received coordinates that marked where it should do the work. Then, a CT scanner marked blue dots to mark the perimeter. Later, the Salur cleared part of the area and, in turn, yellow grids were marked that correspond to archaeological markings. The company has not departed from the coordinates provided by the City Council, these sources highlight.
The works were even seen, photographed and recorded day by day by the neighbors. “We saw it with our own eyes between April 9 and 13. And now the mayor tells us that the georadar detected something where he did not act? ”The Montecarmelo Neighborhood Association and the No Al Cantón Platform criticize in a press release. The organizations have also accused the City Council of “manipulating” the report. “They are preparing a technical document, tailored to their interests, manipulated, to bury the conclusions of the final report of the company that they themselves hired,” he adds.
On the other hand, the mayor has announced that they will send the report to the Ministry of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory – which has requested it repeatedly – and that they will be able to carry out the studies they want, but on the adjacent plot. “If the ministry wants to enter that adjacent plot to check if they are human remains, it will be able to carry out the investigations it deems appropriate,” Almeida said this Thursday.
The company Arqueoantro, hired by the ministry to carry out the archaeological search, has been requesting land occupation permission from the City Council since February 28. However, the municipal position, until now, has been to deny permission to carry out archaeological explorations because it had not provided all the documentation. Cibeles took advantage of article 18 of the Democratic Memory Law, which says that the ministry must agree on a public information period so that, in the event that there are direct descendants of the victims who do not want the remains of their relatives to be transferred, may oppose. There are 451 families of 20 different nationalities 80 years later.
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