Everything they know about him has been the result of the oral testimonies of those who knew him a century ago. Pedro Izquierdo Lasanta was born in Cigudosa (Soria) in 1907. On September 13, 1936, the rebels arrested him in the town of Rebollar. He was killed on his journey to prison, near the Renieblas bridge, along with another man. “At 16 days of life I ran out of mother, and with five years without a father, and I just want to recover her remains,” says her daughter, María Asunción Izquierdo Zamora, at 93 years. And makes it happy and sorry at the same time. The memorialist association memory and dignity plans to exhume Pedro’s body this week.
María Asunción is excited about the perspective that, after so long, she surely finds her father’s body, and also to revive this past of sadness and uncertainty that has accompanied her all her life. “When I claimed my father’s body, decades ago, they told me they didn’t know where I was, that they were missing. See if they lied to me … ” His words sound clear and soft on the other side of the phone. Especially when he remembered his first steps, back in 1931, in the Madrid neighborhood of Cuatro Caminos, where he was born.
The family tour began to draw it the work of his mother, María Antonia Zamora Gómez, who was a teacher. He met Pedro after being destined for Cigudosa (Soria). María Asunción’s pregnancy caught her on the way to Madrid, her new labor horizon. Pedro, who was an electrician, was working in Soria. “She had a bigger heart than the chest, that’s why doctors told her that she couldn’t have children. But he had me and about two weeks later he died, ”Asunción has a shy Galician accent. Because after the death of María Antonia, her daughter was taken to the home of the maternal grandmother in Galicia, where she grew up.
In fact, Asunción recounts that he only met his parents for some photos that the family treasured, so finding the remains of his father is a way to close a story built based on absences. “My father was not involved in anything politics. They always said he was a very good worker. If now they find their bones, I can already die quiet, ”he says firmly.
Memory and dignity ensures that Pedro was working at the Poveda power plant, in Soria, at the time of his arrest. Pedro García Izquierdo, grandson of the electrician and son of Asunción, emphasizes the times he has seen his mother cry for not knowing where to go to pray a Our Father. “That are things that are encaled over the years,” he says.
Pedro’s grandson has been investigating his grandfather’s life for years. He has traveled numerous villages in the area trying to collect more information to understand how he ended up shot in 1936. “I met a woman over 90 who gave us data and references about how the arrest was, and taught me the house in which My grandfather stayed with another couple, ”he says.
Collect the past, close the wound
The chance has made the same day Pedro was born, on February 22, is the day they surely find his body in Renieblas. Nicknamed THE MANQUILLOdue to the hunting accident that in his youth left him without a hand, it will not be very difficult to know if the unearthed body is his, even waiting for genetic analysis. “I think I was hidden or camouflaged to rebollar for reasons that I still do not understand, because I have not found any assignment to political party or union,” recalls Pedro Izquierdo.
In Soria there was no war. What came after the military uprising of July was repression, torture and murders of civil population. Through the oral testimonies, the grandson has known a little more about Pedro’s last moments of life. Different versions lead to the fateful final. One of the men with whom Pedro Izquierdo chatted, about 50, told him that what happened that day in Rebollar was marked for posterity in the town. “He told me that a car and a van appeared in the town square, military, and asked about my grandfather and another lord with whom I lived. Someone went to let them know and fled, ”he explains.
The military managed to capture Pedro, who led to the truck to take him to prison. “A version says that my grandfather jumped from the van when he took a low -speed curve of the road that crosses a stream. Another version says that the agents had a similar way of acting. They said they stopped the truck to urinate or stretch their legs and there they killed them and left their bodies, ”says the grandson.
The testimonies also place another man in the crime scene, perhaps a miller in the area. “It seems that they saw that they were going to kill my grandfather and recriminated it, so they also killed him,” adds Pedro Izquierdo. These two bodies would be those that are now located on the Renieblas bridge, although the exact affiliation of the second victim is still unknown. Memory and dignity has asked for citizen collaboration to identify it, writing to info@recéctorydignidad.org or calling 605 57 74 84.
After years of searching, exhumation comes
Sherezade Benito, vice president of the Soriana memorial association, argues that “in principle Renieblas was not a place for the military for the murder, so something had to happen on the way.” The finding of the remains has arrived after two unsuccessful previous attempts that began in 2021. “We have been very lucky because we started looking for about 500 meters where we have now located the pit. I stopped the car and tried to imagine the scene, think where his body could be, but it was impossible to get an idea, ”says Pedro Izquierdo. Things, he says, would have been easier if the Renieblas pastor had allowed at the time that his remains rest in the town’s cemetery, but it was not so.
On January 20, memory and dignity, with the works of Areco Archeology, managed to find the pit that would contain the mortal remains of these two people. A month later, they will be exhumed by the Aranzadi Science Society. Pedro’s grandson exclaims “the amount of corpses that are still thrown by the gutters of Spain.” He also is quiet. “The nerves do not help to understand the situation, so better to be calm. I did not meet my grandfather, I’ve just seen him in some photographs, so I imagine that makes not a very strong link, ”he says.
“What remains will there be? So many years buried without box or anything … ”, Asunción asks, that this June will turn 94. Repeat again and again that you can die calmly, paraphrasing its terms. “I have cried a lot, I have missed them all my life,” says Asunción. “Many times I say that I have not had envy in the world rather than those who had a father.”
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