The forensic report of Aurora Picornell, the “Pasionaria of Majorca” assassinated by the Franco regime on Twelfth Night in 1937 with four other republican activists, confirms that the 24-year-old girl died of three bullets to the head, but not before. having been harassed and beaten. Two of the projectiles recovered were of small caliber 9×17 and came from an Astra 300 semi-automatic pistol, very common among Falange paramilitary groups. The opinion, to which elDiario.es had access, has just been included in the judicial procedure of investigation against the president of the Balearic Parliament, Gabriel Le Senne (Vox), for rupture, in the middle of the debate on the repeal of the Balearic Parliament. Democratic Memory Law, the portrait of Picornell and two other photos that the second vice-president of the Table, Mercedes Garrido, displayed on the cover of her computer.
The document was prepared after the remains of the anti-fascist fighter were identified in grave number three of the Son Coletes cemetery, in the Majorcan town of Manacor, where the body of her father, Gabriel Picornell Serra, was located, who in In the twenties he was one of the promoters of the Communist Group of Palma. The remains of Picornell, together with those of Belarmina González Rodríguez, Catalina Flaquer Pascual and her daughters Antònia and Maria Pasqual, were found between November and December 2021, during the second phase of excavations and exhumations carried out in this cemetery by the Aranzadi Scientific Society, in collaboration with Àtics, within the framework of the Third Burial Plan (2020-2021) of the Balearic Government.
The identification of the body after almost 90 years hidden in Son Coletes was described by the Minister of Energy Transition, Productive Sectors and Democratic Memory at the time, Juan Pedro Yllanes, who said it was new which would change “the history of the Balearic Islands”. and that this marked the “triumph of democratic society” of the islands.
The body was in good condition and it was a woman, aged between 23 and 35 years old and approximately 151 cm tall. He had good oral health, with virtually no wear and tear and no decay or loss of life. Regarding the trauma perimortemthree gunshots were identified in the skull: one entered through the occipital, another through the right temple, and another through the left facial area. In the post-cranium, peri-mortal injuries were also identified due to the passage of a firearm projectile through the right fourth rib and the left ulna and radius, at the wrist.
At the postcranial level, the report highlights injuries produced in three areas. On the one hand, in the distal region of the fourth right rib, perimortal fractures possibly caused by a firearm could be observed. For his part, the distal region of the left ulna and radius showed a comminuted fracture caused by a firearm, which suggests that the victim was able to raise his arm in a defensive posture, the bullet passing through the wrist. Finally, in the central third of the right fibula, the researchers detected a complete fracture which could be of blunt origin.
The autopsy indicates that the evidence obtained during the exhumation and the subsequent study carried out confirms the presence of trauma. perimortem and signs of violence on three of the skeletons and that the death of the five “Rojas del Molinar” would be a direct consequence of the gunshot wounds. Investigators say that all this demonstrates that these were “violent deaths of a homicidal nature”. Various objects were found next to Picornell’s body, mainly clothing: a white mother-of-pearl button, a metal buckle, a safety pin, a metal snap, and two circular lead weights with a central hole. Additionally, a marble fountain pen was found in the right chest.
“Look, look at Aurora’s bras.”
The story of how the news of Picornell’s execution spread was collected by the Majorcan historian Llorenç Capellà in his book Vermell Dictionaryin which he recounts the details of the assassination of the communist activist. According to their investigations, “a very sad character of citizen fascism” entered a bar in Es Molinar and, visibly happy, took out a bra from his pocket and announced the death of the Majorcan “Pasionaria” by telling the people present: “Look, look at Aurora’s bras. The previous night, the eve of Epiphany 1937, the putschists had shot dead the head of the women’s organization of the Communist Party of the Balearic Islands, who today has become an icon of historical memory and republicanism.
Born in 1912, married and mother of a young daughter, Picornell was a seamstress by profession. She was a member of the board of directors of the Secular League of Mallorca, a trade unionist and feminist and the first promoter of Working Women’s Day in Mallorca. The activist was arrested in the first days after the military coup. And, after July 19, 1936, Manuel Goded, recently proclaimed military commander of the Balearic Islands, declared a state of war in the islands and assumed absolute control of Majorca and Ibiza, severe repression was unleashed on the islands which, as the historian Bartomeu Garí Salleras maintains that it had already been planned months before the conflict and that it would be perfectly executed by the Phalangists, the military, the civil authorities, the right-wing clientelist networks, the chaplains and even by the close to the victims themselves.
Picornell was incarcerated first in the provincial prison of Palma, then in the women’s prison on Calle Sales. She disappeared with her four companions on the night of January 5, 1937.
The Picornell Femenias family was a family well known for its political activism in favor of the rights of workers and the most disadvantaged classes. Although he was particularly popular in the Es Molinar neighborhood of Palma, his activism went well beyond the neighborhood and the city of Palma. They were also one of the families hardest hit by the Franco regime.
Gabriel Picornell and Joana Femenias had seven children. Besides Aurora, her brothers Gabriel and Ignasi were also murdered in Majorca. Likewise, the younger brother, Joan, who left for Barcelona to participate in the popular Olympic Games with his younger sister, Llibertat, would be deported years later to the Nazi concentration camp of Dachau, in Germany. He died shortly after being released as a result of the consequences. Of the remaining sisters, two would remain in Majorca with their mother. Llibertat, the youngest of all, who left the island at just 15 years old, lived in exile in Mexico and France, the latter country where she spent the rest of her life. Llibertat did not set foot in Majorca again until the 1950s, just to visit his mother and two sisters.
Between “long live the Republic”, the cries of “go for the Third” and “in the face of fascism, not a step back” and with Riego’s anthem in the background, the remains of Aurora, her father and the four others. Rojas del Molinar’s photos were handed over to their descendants on January 28, 2023, during a moving ceremony that filled the Palma Music Conservatory to capacity.
