Personal effects and skull bullet holes shed light on Spain’s most inaccessible mass grave

This is the first archaeological intervention carried out inside the Sima de Jinámar, which has allowed us to document skeletal remains belonging to three or four adult males and evidence of skull bullet impacts, in addition to two shell casings and personal items, such as a coin, comb or sole remains.

Archaeological research has developed 70 meters deepwhere is the slope in which two surveys were carried out and in which it was necessary to remove tens of cubic meters of earth, debris and other materials. The human remains appeared as small, unconnected fragments.

The archeology team of the Cabildo de Gran Canaria found bones of three or four adult males with traces of bullet holes in the Sima de Jinámar, as well as rings that, in all likelihood, they were killed. This is one of the “slabs of oblivion that weigh on the democratic memory of Gran Canaria”, underlined the president of the island, who praised the work of the team which “literally immersed itself in the bowels of the island” to reach “a place where the very origin of the earth on which we walk and the terrible scenario of the darkest and most cowardly events in our recent history.

These discoveries, taken together, represent proof of the scientific value of a context of repression after Franco’s military uprising in Gran Canaria and of the use of the volcanic cavity as a place of execution and concealment of the corpses of the victims. of retaliation. The results constitute a crucial element for the possible identification of victims and even their use as expert elements in judicial processes, which is why the Island Corporation will now work with family and memory associations to try to give names and surnames to these people.

The work began in October and will end in November, with new descents into the Chasm, although they will be completed by the subsequent comparison of all the documentation.

The assassin’s Mauser rifle

THE Jinamar Chasm It has been declared an Asset of Cultural Interest in the Historic Site category due to its importance for the collective memory of Gran Canaria and the Canary Islands. “In this enclave, where the dust and stones of this yesterday that we do not forget lie,” he stressed, “the Cabildo intervened through direct actions that began in 2021, with the inspection of the Fond du Gouffre, in collaboration with the Gran Canaria Emergency Consortium; which continued in 2023 with prospecting abroad, and which resulted in this first archaeological intervention official”.

“These are unrelated remains, removed by sedimentary inputs, the action of water and other natural agents, but they reveal, for example, the impact on the head of fatal bullets,” said Morales, who added that “there are flakes that freeze, as is the case of two shell casings, probably belonging to a Mauser rifle used by executioners.

“It is telling that during searches outside the volcanic chimney with a metal detector, no evidence of the shooting was found, further proof of the desire to hide the traces of the murders,” Morales emphasized. The technicians, for their part, explained that Mauser rifles were not in common use, but rather belonged to the army. military forcesand they recalled that the same type of bullet casings had been found in the Pozo de Tenoya and the Llano de Las Brujas, indicating a common pattern.

In addition to these complex and pioneering works in the Sima de Jinámar, works are also underway in the Pozo de Tenoya, where they have been carried out recover 14 men with clear signs of violent death, seven of which could be identified and in the Vegueta cemetery, which allowed the collection of important and unpublished historical information on the yoke of dictatorship on the island, among other places.