The latest actions carried out in one of the graves of the old cemetery in the Sevillian municipality of Cañada Rosal have revealed that some of the remains found could correspond to those of the ‘Aguaucho girls’, five young women raped and murdered in Fuentes de Andalucía at the dawn of the civil war, which have become a symbol of the extreme repression that Spanish fascism exercised against women.
In the preliminary report of the investigation team that is working in the area, it is noted that the initial analyzes – based on historical profiles and censuses of victims – suggest a “possible compatibility” between the remains found in warehouse 3 and the group of victims. of Fuentes de Andalucía who disappeared between August 17 and 29, 1936. Among them, there are five women under 20 years of age, who could correspond to Coral García Lora (16 years old) and her sister Josefa (18), María Jesús Caro González (18), Joaquina Lora Muñoz (18) and María León Becerril (22).
The news has caused great “emotion” among the memorial movement of the province, because if the identity of the victims is confirmed, “one of the most criminal stories of the Civil War” would be closed, as the mayor of Cañada Rosal tells this newspaper. , Rodrigo Rodríguez Hans. To do this, we will have to wait for an in-depth anthropological analysis to be carried out, as well as a genetic study that certifies the biological compatibility between the remains and the relatives of the Fontaniega victims. Although it is not yet definitive, the councilor of the town where the exhumations are being carried out states that “the evidence found leaves little room for doubt”, hence he trusts that the genetic comparison will end up supporting what is today “more than a suspicion.” ”.
“They took the newest ones”
The town of Fuentes de Andalucía has spent too many years trying to close that wound that opened on August 27, 1936, when several Francoists “took away the newest ones,” as the neighbors have repeated for decades. After kidnapping them, they put them in a truck and headed to the neighboring town of La Campana, but first they stopped at the farm known as El Aguaucho.
There they were forced to go down, to make them eat, to sing and dance while their captors insulted and threatened them, drank and got drunk. At dusk, those men returned to walk through the streets of Fontaniegas, now without the young women, although with their underwear, which they raised like flags strung on the tips of their rifles and shotguns shouting: “Tonight we had fresh meat.”
That atrocious episode in the history of Fuentes de Andalucía also resonates in the collective memory of Cañada Rosal because “it has always been said that they brought many people from the neighboring town to murder them on the walls of the cemetery, in those first months after the coup d’état. ”, as the mayor of the municipality where the five young Fontaniegas may be buried remembers.
After so much time trying to locate the bodies of the ‘Aguaucho girls’ to give them a “dignified burial”, and after having overcome “difficult trials” such as the one experienced in 2017 after the fruitless search in the grave near the El Aguaucho well where in theory the young women had been thrown, this news has been received in the region as a cause for celebration. “It seems contradictory to celebrate a discovery like this, of a group of girls that is shocking because they are so young, but these atrocities must be made known to raise awareness among the population and so that they are not repeated,” defends the councilor of Cañada Rosal.
A discovery full of symbolism
The case of the ‘Aguaucho girls’ is, in fact, especially significant because “it exemplifies that pedagogy of terror that Franco’s regime applied against women.” “How they used female bodies as a battlefield,” explains Juan Miguel Baquero, journalist specialized in historical memory and contributor to elDiario.es Andalucía. “Violence was carried out in a symbolic way, hair shaving, castor oil, sexual humiliation… while women were also kidnapped, humiliated, tortured, raped and shot for actively participating in trying to break that patriarchal structure and advance rights,” recalls the expert on memorial issues.
The symbolic meaning contained in this case, comparable to that of the Thirteen Roses, also lies in the fact that at that time “the age of majority was set at 21 years old”, so that “if five of those women located were under 20 , that means that they were all minors.” In the eyes of this journalist, “revealing such terrible situations is very important because it shows that this repression was real.”
In short, “giving light to these stories is giving light to the memory that is buried, that is subject to oblivion and that a democracy cannot allow them to remain unresolved,” concludes Juan Miguel Baquero. A point that Rodríguez Hans also agrees with, who believes that “knowing such a criminal chapter in the history of our country, we will be able to recognize fascism and not fall into the same stone again.”
For this reason, the mayor of Cañada Rosal highlights the work being carried out by the project to recover the remains of victims of reprisals in the old cemetery, thanks to funds from the Ministry of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory. And he celebrates that “work is being done to recover the memory which, ultimately, is to do justice so many years later.”
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