Victims of the White Terror (Spain)

In the history of Spain, the White Terror was the series of assassinations realized by the Nationalist faction during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), and during the first nine years of the régime of General Francisco Franco.^[1] Thousands of victims are buried in hundreds of unmarked common graves (over 2,000),^[2] more than 600 in Andalusia alone.^[3] The largest of these is the common grave at San Rafael cemetery on the outskirts of Málaga (with perhaps more than 4,000 bodies).^[4] The Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Historica or ARMH)^[5] says that the number of disappeared is over 35,000.^[6]

Concrete figures do not exist, as many supporters and sympathizers of the Republic fled Spain after losing the Civil War. Furthermore, the Francoist government destroyed thousands of documents relating to the White Terror^[7][8][9] and tried to hide the executions of the Republicans.^[10][11][12] Gabriel Jackson states that:^[13]

Prisons records and the death registers are misleading, since it is known that certificates of release were regularly signed by or for men who were then taken out and shot, and that certificates alleging heart attacks or apoplexy were made out for corpses left on the open road. Execution techniques deliberately disfigured the corpses so as to make them unrecognizable. Officials of the time have testified that families were afraid to report missing male members, and did not come to identify the bodies of the dead.