Gobiernos democráticos del Estado español frente a la persistencia de la memoria y la historia de las fosas de la guerra civil española. La actuación de la Generalitat en Cataluña (2004-2015)

The present paper is focused on the Generalitat de Catalunya’s Government’s actions since 2004 about the bone remains from the Spanish Civil War, concretely those ones located in the Catalan territory. Most of these remains are buried in common graves, mainly of soldiers, but some of them also appear in the surface, usually without any anatomical connection between them. This paper is structured in two main parts. First of all, it explains both exhumations carried out by the Catalan Government in order to get an empirical basis for a later bill, which was finally approved by the Catalan Parliament in 2009. In the second part, it analyses the actions that took place between 2009 and 2015, which include common graves opening -mainly outside the cemeteries- and bone remains collection in surface. The first exhumation promoted by the Generalitat since democracy establishment in Spain was in 2004 in Prats de Lluçanès (Barcelona). Seven soldiers dead in February 1939 were exhumed, counting on the participation of both physical and forensic anthropologists and using archaeological methodology. The intervention combined both historical investigation and oral testimonies collection. Thus, final results permit ted the identification of that individual whose descendants had been keeping the memory of the place where he had been buried. The second exhumation also promoted by the Catalan Government was in Gurb, near Vic (Barcelona) in 2008. Thirteen soldiers were exhumed then. It has been confirmed in both cases the necessary of an interdisciplinary research, especially the combination between the anthropological analysis of the remains and the historical knowledge about the facts. The second part is focused on the actions that took place after the passing of the aforesaid law in 2009, also including both exhumations and bone remains collection. Unlike the previous interventions, the exhumed or collected remains in that case all belong to republican soldiers whose identity is nowadays still unknown.