CCPR/C/130/D/3599/2019
he kept in his home collection. Although, at the time, girls did not usually remain in school
after their first communion, the couple kept their daughters in school as they wanted them to
receive a broad education.
2.6
In mid-August 1936, Mr. A.M. was detained for a week at Manacor police station. On
22 August 1936, a member of the Guardia Civil went to the couple’s home and ordered Ms.
J.V. to go to the police station because, in order for her husband to be released, they needed
to take a statement from her. When Ms. J.V. arrived at the police station, she was arrested.
Mr. A.M. was released the same day. According to his daughters, “he was very happy but his
heart fell when he learned that our mother was being held”. At the police station, they were
not allowed to see her. One morning, when the daughters woke up, they realized that they
were alone. Their father had disappeared and the door of the house was open. From that point
onward, they had no further contact with their parents.
2.7
In early September 1936, the girls’ paternal grandfather went to the house to look for
them. Claiming that he was bringing clothes to his son and daughter-in-law, he tried to locate
them but Captain Jaume, who at the time was mayor of Manacor and the head of the Falange,
told him that his son and daughter-in-law had no need for clothes.
2.8
The lives of F.A.J. and her older sister changed drastically following the
disappearance of their parents. As girls and “the daughters of reds”, they were particularly
vulnerable in a deeply patriarchal society. They went from living a peaceful life and receiving
a good education to living separately from each other in the homes of different relatives,
undertaking domestic chores and working on building sites and in family bars without being
able to attend school. The girls kept hoping that their parents would return.
2.9
During the Franco dictatorship, the repression of Republican sympathizers and their
families built a wall of silence around the crimes committed by the victors in the Civil War.
The mere act of stating what had happened entailed a serious risk. It is estimated that 214,000
persons were executed and 270,000 were detained in inhuman conditions in order to maintain
the pact of silence.2
2.10 Even when the transition to democracy took place, the victims were still unable to
demand truth, justice and reparation, largely because institutions established under the Franco
regime remained a part of the police, security and justice apparatus. The State maintained
that forgetting was essential if a stable democratic future was to be achieved, even raising the
threat of a return to dictatorship if the past was remembered. Thus, on 15 October 1977, after
it had ratified the Covenant, the State party adopted the Amnesty Act (No. 46/1977),
maintaining that reconciliation was possible only if the past was forgiven and forgotten.
2.11 This pact of silence also shaped the lives of the authors of the communication. When,
at a young age, F.A.J. and her sister finally learned what had happened, their social and family
circles forced them to keep the events secret as the repression made it necessary to remain
silent. According to a psychological study, this led to a so-called “pact of denial”, whereby a
family group subconsciously agrees to set aside painful aspects of their past in order to protect
themselves. Years later, when a neighbour in the village told the daughters that he had seen
at least one of the Falangists raping their mother, a so-called “pregnant red”, and when Josep
Lluís Sastre, known in Manacor as “Pep i la Resta”, told F.A.J., who was by then a married
adult, that he was one of the Falangists who had arrested her parents, she was traumatized.
Her husband, who was unaware of the events but witnessed the encounter, also chose to
remain silent. The inability to talk about the events therefore had consequences for the mental
health of both the daughters and their offspring. Although B.M.R.A., as a member of the next
generation, did not find out what happened to her grandparents until she was 25 years old,
she felt the effects of the trauma, as she witnessed her mother and aunt behaving in
incomprehensible ways. The psychological study also noted that B.M.R.A. was adversely
affected by the extent of the denial, which prevented her from mourning.
2.12 The silence was broken in 2002 with the founding of the Association for the Recovery
of Historical Memory. Furthermore, the 2003 decision of the Working Group on Enforced or
2
GE.21-06035
Brunner, José, “Ironías de la historia española: observaciones sobre la política post-fascista de olvido
y memoria”, in Historia Contemporánea, No. 38 (2010), pp. 163–183.
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