2 Franco generals exhumed from Seville basilica

By Alyssa McMurtry

OVIEDO, Spain (AA) - The bodies of two Francoist generals and one of their wives were exhumed from the Basilica de La Macarena in Seville late Wednesday.

When the bodies were removed from their graves in the prominent church, a small group of the generals’ family members faintly applauded.

Louder was the voice of Paqui Maqueda, an activist who shouted the names of her great-grandfather, great-uncles and grandmother — victims of the Francoist regime, some of whose bodies she is still searching for.

“Honor and glory to the victims of Francoism,” she cried.

Gonzalo Queipo de Llano was one of the generals exhumed. Buried with honors 71 years ago, he was directly responsible for the deaths of 45,000 people in the southern Spanish region of Andalusia during the Spanish Civil War, according to the preeminent historian Paul Preston.

He led the 1936 military coup in Seville and ordered the mass killing of thousands of people in the city, where few military battles took place.

With little regard for his victims, he buried them in around 700 mass graves. In Seville, one of the mass graves currently being excavated is estimated to hold the bodies of around 1,300 of his victims.

Historians say that among Queipo de Llano’s victims are the esteemed Spanish playwright and poet Federico García Lorca and Blas Infante, a politician known as the father of Andalusian nationalism.

In his works, Preston has called Queipo de Llano “the psychopath of the south,” “a monster,” and a “killer.”

Archival documents reveal that his forces systematically devastated the towns they conquered, with some victims found “castrated, with punctured eyes and burned bodies.”

Overnight, Queipo de Llano’s wife was exhumed, along with his right-hand man Gen. Francisco Bohórquez Vecina, the auditor who signed death sentences.

Their bodies were pulled from their prominent resting places by the Brotherhood of the Macarena. The religious group is tied to the iconic basilica in a working-class neighborhood of Seville, and was following orders from the Spanish government.

After passing a new law on historical memory last month, which aims to bring justice to Franco-era victims, Spanish authorities wrote a letter requesting the exhumations “as soon as possible.”

More exhumations are set to follow under the new law, including the bodies of victims buried in mass graves and other right-wing leaders like Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the fascist group El Falange.