Son Valentí cemetery opens Columbari de la Dignitat for Civil War victims

The Son Valentí cemetery in Palma has inaugurated the ‘Columbari de la Dignitat’, a dedicated space to house the remains of 225 victims of the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship. The site includes a rehabilitated chapel and crypt designed to provide a final resting place for those recovered through various exhumation projects across Mallorca.

The remains include identified individuals such as Jaume Bauzà Far and Aurora Picornell Femenias, as well as 214 people whose identities remain unknown. These individuals were recovered from various locations, including the large mass graves in Porreres and Son Coletes, as well as sites in Marratxí, Calvià, Llucmajor, Inca, and Selva.

Archaeologist Xesc Busquets, who directed the excavation projects, noted that these individuals had long remained in ‘fossas de l’oblit’ (fosses of oblivion). Maria Antònia Oliver, President of Memory for Mallorca, described the inauguration as the recovery of a right that many victims of Francoism had been denied for decades.