Fosa de Priaranza del Bierzo memorial

La Fosa de Priaranza del Bierzo is a mass grave located at a turnoff of the Comarcal 536 road on the outskirts of Priaranza. It contains the remains of thirteen men who were buried in a common grave. The site was one of the first graves exhumed using a scientific protocol, which led to the creation of the Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica.

On October 16, 1936, a group of fifteen republican men were captured and taken in a truck at the Town Hall of Villafranca del Bierzo. They were then taken to be shot by a group of Falangist pistoleros. One of them managed to escape, and the remaining fourteen victims were buried in a common grave. One of the bodies was later recovered by the family, leaving thirteen corpses in the grave.

At the initiative of Emilio Silva Barrera, grandson of victim Emilio Silva Faba, the common grave was exhumed on October 28, 2000. Currently, not all identities of the victims are available. In 2010, a decade after the exhumation, a commemorative plaque was placed where the grave of the thirteen of Priaranza was located.

The plaque reads: 'This ditch, for 64 years, was the anonymous grave of thirteen republican civilians victims of the Francoist repression. Its exhumation in October of the year 2000 broke the silence about thousands of missing and gave rise to the birth of the Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica. Their dignity and their tragedy must form part of our memory.' This grave is part of the proyecto Memorias situadas, which collects different places of memory related to serious violations of human rights around the world.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons