Negotiating identity: reburial and commemoration of the civil war dead in southwestern Spain

Abstract

This article considers how the reburial and commemoration of the human remains of the Republican defeated during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) is affected by the social, scientific and political context in which the exhumations occur. Focusing on a particular case in the southwestern region of Extremadura, it considers how civil society groups administer reburial acts when a positive identification through DNA typing cannot be attained. In so doing, the article examines how disparate desires and memories come together in collective reburial of partially individuated human remains.

Keywords

• dna typing
• reburial
• spanish civil war
• exhumations
• local commemoration
• collective memory