The search for a possible mass grave in the Montecarmelo neighborhood, where the Madrid City Council plans a garbage canton, has reached the courts. The Association of Friends of the International Brigades (AABI) has denounced Mayor José Luis Martínez Almeida and four officials before the Prosecutor’s Office for a crime of prevarication by “improperly concealing” the content of the report from the company that Cibeles hired to verify whether the In the plot where the work is projected, there may or may not be a grave with the remains of 451 international brigade members who fell during the Spanish Civil War. Three weeks ago, El PAÍS announced that the georadar used by the company Gama Geofisica returned results “highly compatible” with a mass grave that may contain human remains.
The AABI has accused the mayor; to the Urban Planning delegate, Borja Carabante; the president councilor of the Fuencarral district board, José Antonio Martínez Páramo; to the general director of Cleaning, Víctor Sarabia; and the Deputy Director of Cleaning, Olivia Lombraña, for “lack of transparency” by not making public the results of the company’s report, just as Carabante had promised on April 8.
Gama Geofisica, SL delivered the report on April 26, according to the AABI, and, after more than 50 days, not only has the document not been made public, but the “raw” data is being used by the Directorate of Cleaning to write “the final report”, as explained by the president of the Fuencarral district in last week’s plenary session. However, knowledgeable sources have assured this newspaper that what the company delivered is not a raw document, but a final report, with conclusions. The AABI’s request, now, is that the City Council deliver the report to the Prosecutor’s Office and that, in turn, Gama Geofisica, SL provide the document sent to “verify its integrity.”
In the complaint filed in the last few hours before the Human Rights and Democratic Memory section, the association has also accused officials of an “obstructionist attitude” for “preventing” the access of the Secretariat of State for Democratic Memory of the central government to the land to carry out the archaeological study. In February, the Ministry of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory hired the company Arqueoantro to carry out an archaeological survey over a period of three weeks to definitively verify whether or not plot 26.2b – the one selected for the work – had bones.
On February 28, Arqueoantro requested permission from the City Council to occupy the land, but the competent area archived the file on May 14, alleging that the ministry had not complied with the public information period ordered by the Democratic Memory Law. On May 30, the company requested permission again and, almost three weeks later, is still waiting for a response.
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The AABI, which since 1995 has been working to protect the memory of the international volunteers who fought alongside the Republican army in the Civil War, has been tracking this grave for years, which would be the largest of its kind. With historical documents, photographs from the time and even a list of the 451 people in the grave, he has warned on several occasions that he has strong indications that the burial would be in the vicinity of the Fuencarral cemetery.
The 451 brigade members were buried in a plot adjacent to the cemetery until, in 1941, the Franco regime gave the order to exhume them and take them “to the common grave of the cemetery of this town”, according to a book of minutes of the then sessions. Fuencarral City Council, absorbed by Madrid in 1951.
The cause of the AABI crossed paths with that of the residents of Montecarmelo in September, when they warned that the City Council was planning to build a canton and a SELUR base in the back of the cemetery, right in the same area where the AABI suspected that the grave was.
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