After the death of Franco in 1975, Spain followed a policy of Pacto del Olvido, The Pact of Forgetting. Both Left and Right wanted to put the events of the Civil War behind them, both sides having committed atrocities against their neighbours. The Pact is being questioned these days, however. Two years ago, in February 2021, the remains of María Domínguez Remón were uncovered in the small Aragónese town of Fuendejalón. She had been killed by Franco’s troops on 7 September 1936. Her story is a remarkable one. Overcoming poverty and a brutal first marriage, María went on to become a teacher and the first female mayor of the Second Republic. The unmarked graves of others killed with her are close by.
The second poem relates to the execution by Republican troops of Jaime Hilario Barbel, on 18 January 1937. Barbel was a member of a Catholic order, but due to severe hearing loss was unable to continue his work as a teacher and catechist. He then worked as a gardener in the grounds of the college of St Joseph at Tarragona. He was arrested and tried as member of a religious organisation, but his defence pleaded with him to say that he was just a gardener. This could possibly have saved his life. However, Jaime refused this defence and he was taken out to be shot on the Monte de los Olivos. The execution squad did not hit him, despite firing two salvos. He was eventually shot dead by the captain of the guard at close range.
Against Forgetting
In memory of María Domínguez Remón, killed by Franco’s soldiers on 7 September 1936.
Where is your sister, Aragón?
Her blood is crying from the ground.
Can you mend this broken comb
that held her hair? This broken bone?
And from whose hand did she receive this harm?
*
Who would have thought they’d find
you in so small a town, so tucked away
from city politics? Your strong hands
adept at picking fruit or cutting wheat,
as working with a pen,
or teaching children how to read.
September and the time
of grapes and summer fruit,
joyful outdoor work, autumnal sunshine,
but then the children running,
Soldados,
soldados vienen.
Someone must have talked, let your name slip,
perhaps an accident,
perhaps deliberate.
*
What happened next almost forgotten,
but now after all these years,
a kind of resurrection:
your reliquary, a photograph of bones,
your hair grips, buttons, shoes; the lives
and deaths of you, your compañeros.
*
Her blood, it still cries out. What does it say?
Were we also there that day? And in what roles?
The Gardener
In memory of Jaime Hilario Barbel killed by Republican soldiers on 18 January 1937.
At ten paces we could hardly miss.
A firing squad of marksmen
failing twice begins to look
something like complicity,
or intervention from above.
He must have felt concussion
in his guts and in the air,
as bullets passed by close,
deaf as he was
and covered with a hood.
The captain of the guard,
though, does not miss
at point blank range,
firing till the hammer clicks,
close enough to stain
his clothes with blood.
A reactionary church allied
with fascist anti-democratic thugs,
standing in the path to peace
must either change or die.
We cut him loose,
and dig an unmarked grave.
He brought it on himself,
did not even listen to his own defence
that gave him every chance
to say the thing that was no lie:
Soy jardinero.
Even after that, we did our best,
deliberately aimed wide. Just
couldn’t save him from himself.
But then when we go home,
we cannot look our children
in the eye, the place where all
excuses miss the mark.
Is this the country
that we want for them,
where men are tied
to posts and shot,
not for being who they are,
but for being who we’re not?