The latest actions carried out in one of the tombs of the ancient cemetery of the Seville municipality of Cañada Rosal revealed that some of the remains found could correspond to those of the “Aguaucho girls”, five young women raped and murdered in Fuentes de Andalucía. at the dawn of the civil war, which became a symbol of the extreme repression exercised by Spanish fascism against women.
In the preliminary report of the investigative team working in the area, it is noted that initial analyzes – based on historical profiles and censuses of victims – suggest a “possible compatibility” between the remains found in the warehouse 3 and the group of victims. . from Fuentes de Andalucía who disappeared between August 17 and 29, 1936. Among them there are five women under the age of 20, who could correspond to Coral García Lora (16 years old) and her sister Josefa (18 years old), María Jesús . Caro González (18 years old), Joaquina Lora Muñoz (18 years old) and María León Becerril (22 years old).
The news caused great “emotion” within the province’s memorial movement, because if the identity of the victims was confirmed, “one of the most criminal stories of the civil war” would be closed, as the mayor said by Canada Rosal. newspaper, Rodrigo Rodríguez Hans. To do this, it will be necessary to wait until an in-depth anthropological analysis is carried out, as well as a genetic study certifying the biological compatibility between the remains and the relatives of the Fontaniega victims. Even if it is not yet definitive, the municipal councilor of the commune where the exhumations are carried out affirms that “the evidence found leaves little room for doubt”, and he therefore hopes that the genetic comparison will ultimately confirm what is today “more than a suspicion.”
“They took the most recent ones”
The town of Fuentes de Andalucía has spent too many years trying to heal this wound which opened on August 27, 1936, when several Francoists “took away the most recent ones”, as neighbors have been saying for decades. After kidnapping them, they put them in a truck and headed to the nearby town of La Campana, but first stopped at the farm known as El Aguaucho.
There they were forced to go down, make them eat, sing and dance while their captors insulted and threatened them, drank and got drunk. At dusk, these men returned to stroll through the streets of Fontaniegas, now without the young women, but with their underwear, which they brandished like flags hanging from the end of their guns and rifles, shouting: “Tonight, We had fresh meat.”
This atrocious episode in the history of Fuentes de Andalucía also resonates in the collective memory of Cañada Rosal because “it was always said that they brought many people from the neighboring village to murder them on the walls of the cemetery, in the first months which followed. the coup d’état”, as the mayor of the town where the five young Fontaniegas could be buried remembers.
After so much time trying to locate the bodies of the “daughters of Aguaucho” to offer them a “dignified burial”, and after overcoming “difficult trials” like the one experienced in 2017 after the unsuccessful search in the tomb near El Aguaucho although in theory the young women had been thrown, this news was received in the region as a reason for rejoicing. “It seems contradictory to celebrate a discovery like this, of a group of girls who are shocking because they are so young, but these atrocities must be known to raise awareness and so that they do not happen again,” defends the councilor. by Canada Rosal.
A discovery full of symbolism
The case of the “Aguaucho girls” is in fact particularly significant because “it illustrates the pedagogy of terror that the Franco regime applied against women”. “How they used the female body as a battlefield,” explains Juan Miguel Baquero, journalist specializing in historical memory and contributor to elDiario.es Andalucía. “The violence was carried out in symbolic ways, hair shaving, castor oil, sexual humiliation… while women were also kidnapped, humiliated, tortured, raped and shot for actively participating in the attempt to break this structure patriarchal and to advance rights”, recalls the expert on memory issues.
The symbolic meaning contained in this affair, comparable to that of the Thirteen Roses, also lies in the fact that at that time “the age of majority was set at 21 years”, so that “if five of these women located had under 20 years old”, which means that they were all minors. In the eyes of this journalist, “revealing such terrible situations is very important because it shows that this repression was real”.
In short, “shedding light on these stories is shedding light on the memory that is buried, that is subject to forgetting and that a democracy cannot allow to remain unresolved,” concludes Juan Miguel Baquero. A point with which Rodríguez Hans also agrees, who believes that “knowing such a criminal chapter in the history of our country, we will be able to recognize fascism and not fall into the same stone again”.
It is for this reason that the Mayor of Cañada Rosal highlights the work carried out by the project to recover the remains of victims of reprisals in the old cemetery, thanks to funds from the Ministry of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory. And he welcomes the fact that “work is underway to recover the memory which, ultimately, will allow justice to be done so many years later”.
