The parish priest of Albatera (Alicante, 12,864 inhabitants), Manuel Serna, notified his colleague in Antequera (Málaga, 41,184 inhabitants), Pedro del Pozo, of the execution of Francisco García Parejo, a prisoner in the concentration camp in Alicante where Francoism imprisoned tens of thousands of Republicans between April and October 1939. The intention of the sending priest was for Del Pozo, the deceased’s uncle by marriage, to convey the news of the execution to the wife and niece of García Parejo “in the best possible way so that they make it less painful.” The descendants of the murdered railway worker from Malaga have kept the letter as a family treasure, to preserve his memory. But, in addition, the note is a documentary jewel, according to Felipe Mejías, the archaeologist who is working on the land that one day occupied the concentration camp. “The letter is dated June 22, 1939,” explains Mejías, “more than a week before the first executions officially recorded in the Albatera registry.” And, therefore, he “confirms that the testimonies of the prisoners, who said that there were executions that were not recorded, were true.”
García Parejo was a lieutenant in the Republic army born in Fuente de Piedra (Málaga), according to what his granddaughter, Mari Cruz García Martínez, told EL PAÍS. Since he was little, he worked as a day laborer until he got a job as a railway engineer, settled in the Antequera districts of Bobadilla and Colonia de Santa Ana. “He was always clear about his involvement in the workers’ struggle,” says his granddaughter, “and according to the neighbors , joined the CNT union”. After the rebels entered Antequera, in August 1936, García Parejo “threw into the mountains” and his wife, Teresa, “ran to Malaga with her four children.” In 1937, he went to the front to fight for the Republic and his family lost track of him until he ended up imprisoned in Albatera, where Teresa visited him accompanied by his youngest son, Ramón, four years old, the father by Maria Cruz.
The portrait of the shot soldier presided over the houses of his four children all his life, but his story remained silenced until the arrival of the Transition. The letter was kept by Teresa until her death and, later, one of her sons kept it, “who carried it folded in his wallet until they convinced him that it was not the right place to keep it,” says García Martínez, who inherited the document. in 2004. Before passing away, Teresa revealed the last stretch of her grandfather’s life: “He ran away [del campo de Albatera] because they deceived him”, he recalled, “they told him there was a ship”, probably heading for the Algerian city of Oran, “and they took them away from the coast, but it was a trap”. “Without any trial being held,” continues the granddaughter of the victim, “they sentenced him to death for a war side.” Teresa and her children, between the ages of 4 and 12, also suffered another sentence, “that of misery and vulnerability.”
In the letter, Serna indicates that García Parejo “has been executed in the concentration camp” for “having escaped a month ago.” She also narrates that he has “been by his side” in his last moments, which have been “of sincere regret.” In the same postal package, she attached “the wallet” that the executed man gave her before he died, “with his railway card, a photograph of his children and thirty-three pesetas on paper.” Finally, the Albaterense priest recounts that García Parejo has been “buried in the cemetery of this parish”, in “a place that can be seen”. More historical contribution, in the opinion of the archaeologist, since in this way he confirms that “in the old Albatera cemetery”, currently hidden under a park, “there is a common grave full of bodies that were not transferred to the new one”.
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![Copy of the execution letter of Francisco García. for the Court of 1979.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/BNBN87IObDKQHPXeSYJ-QUJ9iWQ=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/SHZREWQPWBHKTDP43B2S5TVL2I.jpg)
Mejías is preparing the fourth research campaign on the land of the concentration camp, which currently belongs to the municipality of San Isidro (2,154 inhabitants), located about 20 kilometers from Orihuela, in the Vega Baja region, south of the province of Alicante. The expert, who has already detected some of the facility’s barracks and probes the land in search of the mass grave, explains that in the Albatera Civil Registry, there are only 10 deaths that occurred between “April 6 or 7 and October 26 from 1939″, the dates on which Franco kept the detention center open. “On July 1 there were four executions”, to which are added another four “on September 14, 16 and 29 and October 15”. All of them recorded as deaths “by firearm injury.” The official documentation also reports “one deceased from typhoid peritonitis and another from acute anemia.” However, both the testimonies of the prisoners and the ammunition casings found in the area suggest that “Francoism hid many more deaths.” In Albatera, where some 15,000 detainees were overcrowded, many of them from the port of Alicante, where everyone who wanted to flee Spain at the end of the Civil War crowded, “it is intuited that there were dozens, hundreds of deaths.” And, of them, “the estimate, based on the prisoners’ accounts, is that there were about 50 shots.”
The family’s intention is to deposit the letter in the Albatera field “when it is put into musealization,” which is Mejías’ ultimate goal. On the 15th, the Department of Democratic Quality of the Generalitat Valenciana registered it in the regional catalog of places and itineraries of democratic memory, which not only guarantees its protection, but also that of “all those elements, current or future, that settle” in it. This protection would give “tranquility” to the family. “We want the letter to return to the place it came from,” continues García Martínez, “that the memory of my grandfather stays there, what it cannot do is be in a drawer.”
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