When Florencio Elipe Sánchez learned that he was going to be shot for having fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, he asked his brother Victoriano, also sentenced to death in a Franco trial, to help him write a letter to say goodbye. Florencio could not write, because in 1938, in a battle in Alcañiz (Teruel), the explosion of a shell had blown off both of his hands. In his cell she said goodbye to his 16-month-old son whom he would not see grow up. On a piece of paper, with a blue ink pen and small, delicate handwriting, Victoriano wrote the beginning of the letter: “Dear all, I inform you that on the 13th at two in the morning they took out our dear brother Florencio. […] I will go the same shortly. […] “It was Franco’s justice that killed us.”
Florencio Elipe Sánchez was shot on July 13, 1939 and his body was thrown into a common grave in the civil cemetery of Colmenar Viejo. He was missing until 2022, when the Aranzadi scientific group exhumed his remains. On May 12, after three DNA matching tests, the Truth Commission of San Sebastián de los Reyes called the family to confirm that they had identified Florencio. This bricklayer born in Corpa (Community of Madrid), who enlisted in the Republican Army and who was shot when he was 34 years old, is the first person identified in the Colmenar Viejo mass grave, the largest opened so far in the Community of Madrid. Madrid. Through documents found in the Municipal Archive, it was learned that 108 people had received the death penalty in the Francoist military court of Colmenar Viejo and that they were thrown into a common grave. Of those people, 19 had already been recovered and buried by their families. Of the remaining 89 that were still missing, the bodies of 77 have been recovered in two archaeological campaigns carried out in 2022 and 2023. But only Florencio Elipe has been identified by DNA.
Florencio still speaks, even though he has been dead for 85 years. He does it through the letter his brother wrote. “Carmen, Florencio gave me many kisses and hugs for your son and for you,” the piece of paper says. When it was his turn to be executed, Victoriano They allowed him to see his family. Carmen López, Florencio’s widow, arrived there with her little son who had lost his father. Discreetly, Uncle Victoriano hid two pieces of paper in the pocket of his nephew’s clothes, to prevent them from being lost if Carmen was searched. The little papers were saved and Carmen carefully hid them in a jewelry box in the Salvador González store, with a light blue cover and decorated with lilac flowers. Sometimes, the Elipes take out the letter to review Florencio and Victoriano’s farewell: “So [esperamos] “Be happy and have luckier life than us.”
Florencio speaks through the letter and, also, through his son Florencio Elipe López, who is 86 years old and still alive; and his granddaughter Natalia Elipe, who met him through the stories that her grandmother Carmen told her. After the battle at Alcañiz, Florencio returned home mutilated and, a few months later, when the war ended, he was summoned to trial. “His defenders said how could they kill a man who had no arms and was harmless. Then, another responded ‘he still has a language,’” says Florencio Jr., who, once the dictatorship ended and he was almost 50 years old, joined the Communist Party. Gone were the days when, at school, Florencio was made to sing the Face to sun and greet with “Up Spain!” before entering the classroom.
What affects the most is what happens closest. So you don’t miss anything, subscribe.
Subscribe
The Elipes knew where Florencio was. “The day they killed my father, my mother brought a sheet with which they covered him and buried him. Then, every year, she took me to the cemetery. We left Hortaleza walking along San Luis Avenue until we reached Fuencarral. There, a little train took us to Colmenar Viejo, we went up to the cemetery and left flowers for him and my uncle,” says Florencio. In 2022, Emilio Silva, a family friend and president of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH), found out about the exhumation and took the Elipes to Colmenar. Florencio pointed to the place where his father was and commented that there must be a body missing both hands. One of the archaeologists said in a low voice, surprised: “We have already taken that one out.” Florencio had no hands, but he still had “tongue” to give clues that he was that skeleton they had found in grave number two.
That same day, they took a saliva sample from Florencio and explained to him that they would take his DNA from there and compare it with that of the exhumed bodies. But it took more than a year and a half for the test to come back positive; the analyzes had to be repeated up to three times. Identification with DNA is one of the most difficult battles fought after exhumations, according to Carmen Carreras, president of the Truth Commission Association of San Sebastián de los Reyes. “Luckily, here we have DNA to identify about half of the bodies found. We have made a great effort to obtain samples from relatives,” says Carreras.
What comes next is to take samples of the skeletons, send them to the genetics laboratory and do the entire study in the skeletal archeology laboratory of the Faculty of Biology of the Complutense University of Madrid. But for that you need money. Although the association obtained two grants from the State – one for 22,900 euros and another for 156,000 – they still need resources to complete the identification. “We are on the right path and this cannot be left in the lurch. You have to identify them all to the extent possible and then you have to dignify them,” says Carreras. Now, the association has opened a donation campaign to buy a mausoleum in San Sebastián de los Reyes, the municipality to which 25 of the 108 executed people belong. “The remains of those who cannot be identified have to rest somewhere,” explains Carreras.
Florencio Elipe López, for his part, hopes that his father’s remains will be delivered to him soon to take him to the Hortaleza Cemetery. “My mother rests there. Years ago I bought a niche for myself; I never imagined that I would be able to bury him there, she says.
Five days after they called the Elipes to give them the news of the identification, there was a tribute in San Sebastián de los Reyes. That day, the Truth Commission Aranzadi They presented the results of the exhumations. At the event, one of the projected slides caught the attention of the Elipes. “It was a photograph that showed two corpses and it was clear that one of them was missing part of both arms. My father and I looked at each other and I told him: ‘Grandpa was in grave 2’,” says Natalia Elipe.
After the exhibition, the Secretary of State for Democratic Memory, Fernando Martínez, gave another surprise to the family. “This belonged to your father,” the Secretary told Florencio and gave him a small box with objects that had been recovered next to his father’s body: a fragment of a buckle and another of a ring, an iron hook and a piece of leather tape, among other small pieces. The Elipes now keep that little white box along with a small plastic bag containing soil from the grave and the jewelry box that keeps the letter.
Florencio Elipe lost his father as a child and has not rested until he recovered his mortal remains, located in the Colmenar Viejo cemetery.
It was an honor to give him his father’s objects, found in the grave where he was shot by the dictatorship.#MemoryIsDemocracy pic.twitter.com/UXM7PCERxm
— Fernando Mtnez. Lopez (@FmartineL) May 17, 2024
-And what have you heard about Uncle Victoriano?
– I think we will never find it.
This is how Florencio responds about the whereabouts of his other missing relative, the author of the letter. The only thing they know is that his body was thrown into the grave that was in the cemetery hallway. Victoriano Elipe was shot on September 9, 1939 and in his letter he only regretted one thing: that he had not been shot with his brother so that both bodies would have gone to the same place.
Victoriano, who was also mayor of Hortaleza and founder of the PSOE in that town, today only honors remain in the neighborhood. In 2019, a square in the district was named Plazuela del Alcalde de Hortaleza Victoriano Elipe Sánchez. That same year, in Plaza Chabuca, A monolith was installed with the names of 16 residents of Hortaleza murdered between 1939 and 1941. The names of the Elipe brothers have already begun to be erased from the stone, as have the letters of the letter that Victoriano wrote to himself from his cell.
Subscribe here to our newsletter about Madrid, which is published every Tuesday and Friday.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#DNA #identify #Florencios #father #largest #mass #grave #Madrid #hands #tongue