On November 15, 1939, the Francoist army shot a man of butcher profession who got into the UGT of Sacedón to help others. His body was thrown with many others into a mass grave in the cemetery of Guadalajara.

Everything took the war. No one in the town wanted to buy that meat with a reputation for red anymore. And at home there was a childhood trauma: his daughter Ascension did not forget that she was the one who opened the door when they came to take him away. That girl needed to close it.

I don't know if you have a very clear ideology. A stony and undoubted ideology that works as an engine and makes you move. What I am absolutely convinced of is that you have a father.

Ascension Mendieta began her life looking for her last hug. Last Tuesday he could give it. She was buried next to him in La Almudena in Madrid. After almost 80 years looking for his remains , after countless visits to the cemetery asking for him and after resorting to the Argentine justice; The daughter managed to recover the father's remains in 2017.

Jesus Montiel writes: «My children give birth to me».

(...)

I remember the day we went with Carmen to the same cemetery and for the same reason. With Carmen, who is Catholic, she never exercised violence , she is of an old generosity, knows nothing about politics and could hardly study: her grandchildren dictate her and she lets herself be corrected.

My mother-in-law was two years old when her father was shot in the same province for the crime of working in a Republican town hall and, since that time, she had not heard from him. We made some calls. We got some clues. We found the site. And then, knowing the news, her face lit up : she put on her best dress, combed her hair to go to Mass and bought a bouquet of flowers.

It took us an hour to know that the remains of that grave we had written down had passed to another. And from there to an ossuary. I do not forget the image: it was not that there was no one. Not even the rain It was to see an old woman not knowing where to deposit some flowers in a cemetery.

There will come a day when in that dismembered and denial Spain understands that the search for Ascension (or Carmen's) is not a story about reds.

But a story that does not necessarily have to do with the left and right (or not just with the left and right). A story that has to do especially with dignity and justice . With a little daughter and with a father. And a lot with love.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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  • Spain
  • Guadalajara
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  • Spanish Civil War
  • Francisco Franco Bahamonde
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