Personal belongings and cranial bullet impacts shed light on the most inaccessible mass grave in Spain

This is the first archaeological intervention carried out inside the Sima de Jinámar, which has allowed us to document skeletal remains belonging to three or four adult males and evidence of cranial bullet impacts, in addition to two shell casings and personal objects, such as a coin, a comb or remains of a sole.

Archaeological research has developed 70 meters deepwhere the slope is located in which two surveys have been carried out and in which it has been necessary to remove tens of cubic meters of earth, debris and other materials. The human remains have appeared in the form of small, unconnected fragments.

The archeology team of the Cabildo de Gran Canaria has found bones of three or four adult males with evidence of bullet impacts in the Sima de Jinámar, as well as the bushings that, in all probability, they were killed. This is one of the “slabs of oblivion that weigh on the democratic memory of Gran Canaria”, pointed out the island president, who has celebrated the work of the team that has “literally immersed itself in the bowels of the island”, to reach “a place where the very origin of the land that we step and the terrible scenario of the darkest and most cowardly events in our recent history.

These findings, taken together, represent evidence of scientific value of a context of repression after the Francoist military uprising in Gran Canaria and of the use of the volcanic cavity as a place of execution and concealment of the corpses of retaliated people. The findings are crucial material for the possible identification of victims and even their use as expert elements in judicial processes, so the insular Corporation will now work with family and memory associations to try to give names and surnames to these people.

The work began in October and will end in November, with new descents into the Chasm, although they will be completed with the subsequent comparison of all the documentation.

The assassin’s Mauser rifle

The Jinamar Chasm It was declared an Asset of Cultural Interest with the category of Historical Site due to its importance for the collective memory of Gran Canaria and the Canary Islands. “In this enclave, where the dust and stones of this yesterday that we do not forget lie,” he emphasized, “the Cabildo has intervened with direct actions that began in 2021, with the inspection of the bottom of the Chasm, in collaboration with the Consortium of Gran Canaria Emergencies; which continued in 2023 with foreign prospecting, and which lead to this first archaeological intervention official”.

“These are unconnected remains, removed by sedimentary contributions, the action of water and other natural agents, but they reveal, for example, the impact on the head of the fatal bullets,” said Morales, who added that “there are glitters that ice, as is the case of two shell casings, probably belonging to a Mauser rifle used by executioners.

“It is eloquent that in the searches outside the volcanic chimney with a metal detector, no evidence of the shootings was found, further proof of the desire to hide the traces of the murders,” Morales stressed. The technicians, for their part, explained that Mauser rifles were not in common use, but rather they used to belong to the military forcesand they recalled that the same type of bullet casings have been found in the Pozo de Tenoya and the Llano de Las Brujas, which points to a common pattern.

In addition to these complex and pioneering works in the Sima de Jinámar, work is also being done in the Pozo de Tenoya, where it was achieved recover 14 men with clear signs of violent deathseven of which could be identified and in the Vegueta Cemetery, which allowed important and unpublished historical information to be collected about the yoke of the dictatorship on the island, among other locations.