VILLAMAYOR DE LOS MONTES, Spain, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- Spain, coming at last to terms with the regime of Gen. Francisco Franco, is exhuming the graves of tens of thousands executed by his Fascist forces.
The victims, who died in the country's 1936-39 civil war and put into unmarked graves, have been ignored for more than half a century, the Los Angeles Times reported.
They were ignored first out of fear and shame and later, after Franco's death in 1975 and the advent of democracy, out of a politically expedient desire to move beyond the past, the report said.
"We have lived a collective historical and political amnesia," says one archeologist. "An imposed amnesia."
Now some families of the leftist victims have decided to end the silence, recover their dead, give them proper burials and restore dignity to their memories.
They're being led by the grandchildren of the victims, who have the distance and freedom to explore areas their parents were terrified to touch.
The election this year of a Socialist government has raised hope for real movement in the quest for historical truth, the Times said.
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is the grandson of a man who also was shot to death by Franco loyalists.
