Memorial 2238 is a place of memory and tribute to the victims of Francoism who were executed in Paterna between April 3, 1939, and November 10, 1956. It has been conceived by their relatives, grouped in different associations and in the Platform that gives them a voice.
Behind the idea of Memorial 2238 lies the will to remember these victims, to ensure "that their names are not erased from history" (Julia Conesa), but also the conviction that many of them embodied the democratic values they fought for against the unfair Council of War trials they were subjected to. Memorial 2238 is offered to those who visit it as that part of the "silent, anonymous, and disappeared History that is to be loved" (Simone Weil) in contrast to the patriotic paraphernalia that justified their murder.
The cemetery of Paterna, and particularly the left quadrant of the first section - where the most of the victims are located - has been since 1939 a place of mourning for families who visited their executed relatives. Initially, these families faced many problems maintaining and dignifying the land their relatives occupied, and with the arrival of democracy, various acts of homage and vindication were held. Events in which citizens, unions, and political organizations already participated. Among these interventions, we highlight the construction of three funerary monuments: the Paterna City Council in 1981, built after the first democratic elections; the monolith of Mass Grave 126 designed by Dionisio Vacas and erected in 1989; and the iron monolith, showing verses by Vicent Andrés Estellés and located next to the old cemetery gate. It was promoted by the Fòrum de la Memòria del País Valencià in 2009.
There are three milestones in the creation of the associative movement of the Relatives of Paterna Mass Graves and their way of acting:
The issue number 75 of the magazine El Temps on November 25, 1985, which just 10 years after the dictator's death published in full the list of the 2238 Republican victims assassinated in Paterna - thanks to the priceless work of the historian Vicent Gabarda, who will continue subsequently in other studies - indicating the date of the execution, age, profession, and last residence of each of them. The dimension of horror is concretized for the first time, and the number and identity of the victims in each mass grave are inferred, information that the victims' families themselves were unaware of and that will be essential for associations to be created around each mass grave in later years.
The exhumation of a mass grave in Priaranza del Bierzo in 2000, which led to the creation of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARHM). It was one of the first exhumations carried out with scientific criteria, widely publicized by the media, and which concluded with the DNA identification of some victims, allowing families to recover the bodies. It will become an example to follow throughout Spanish territory and also for the Relatives of Paterna Mass Graves because gradually, especially among the elderly, the idea of undertaking a process of dignification of the victims will open up. This process will involve recovering the bodies of parents or grandparents, when possible, and having them rest in the cemeteries of their hometowns near their relatives and, in many cases, in a conjugal grave.
The first Historical Memory Law of 2007 and the willingness of some administrations to apply it, such as the Provincial Council of Valencia since 2015 and the Ministry of Participation, Transparency, and Democratic Quality in the last parliamentary term, competencies that currently correspond to the Presidency of the Generalitat. This favors the creation of family associations and public funding (40 years after the restoration of democracy) for the initiation of exhumations of the dictatorship's victims in Paterna.
With the first exhumations, a series of difficulties arise: there is not always a match between the bodies found in the graves and those that were presumably supposed to be there. Sometimes a group of executed prisoners is thrown into various graves because these are actually deep holes that are filled with bodies, often thrown in any way. Identification tests are carried out in Madrid in different laboratories because the work teams for the exhumations belong to different companies or entities. There are victims in the graves for whom associations have not been able to find relatives, making their identification impossible. The deterioration of the remains is sometimes so great that obtaining DNA from them is not possible. What to do with the bodies that, lacking identification, cannot be returned to their families? Many associations refuse to have them returned to the same place.
On the other hand, the discovery of the first bodies reveals what was already known: that they had died violently, as evidenced by the fractures of bones from bullet impacts, the coup de grace in the skull of all of them, the presence in their bodies or in the grave of the same bullets, and the ropes with which they had been bound... Their deaths are reported to the courts of Paterna, and they decline to advance in the corresponding proceedings because they consider the crimes that may have been committed to be prescribed and because they say that the Amnesty Law of 1977 prevents it. Convinced that crimes against humanity have been committed and that these neither prescribe nor are covered by amnesty, the families carry out different meetings between associations that will lead to a series of initiatives: intervening on November 7, 2018, in Brussels invited by the European Parliament to explain the legal situation of judicial neglect in which associations find themselves; joining the Argentine lawsuit instructed by María Servini and intervening on December 12 of that same year in the Spanish Parliament.
During 2018, contacts between family associations are frequent, and common demands emerge: the need to establish a public DNA bank that allows data to be crossed between victims and relatives from different mass graves (a role that will later be fulfilled by FISABIO in the Valencian Country and that is included in the Democratic Memory Law of 2023); the will to bury with dignity those unidentified bodies or those whose families wish them to remain in Paterna cemetery; the importance, both symbolic and functional, of Democracy taking care of the crimes of the Dictatorship instead of the relatives taking care of the entire process of exhumation, identification, and reburial.
All this will lead to the creation in March 2019 of the PLATFORM OF RELATIVES OF THE VICTIMS OF FRANCOISM OF THE COMMON GRAVES OF PATERNA, which previously to its formal creation, in fact since 2018, is already working on involving the administrations in the construction of a Memorial in Paterna cemetery, and at the same time and for the same purpose, it calls on citizens on the last Friday of each month to the gatherings it organizes in the Plaza de la Virgen in València.
The Platform requests reports from the CSIC (Spanish National Research Council): Resolution regarding the consultation on the final destination of the remains exhumed in the common graves of Paterna cemetery (May 2019) and from the ArqueoAntro Scientific Society: Anthropological and archaeological report on the destination of the unidentified bone remains of the Francoist victims of the municipal cemetery of Paterna (June 2019), which definitively incline the Platform to promote Memorial 2238.
An interdisciplinary team composed of sculptor Pablo Rafael Sedeño Pacios, architect Francesc de Paula Rozalén Martínez, and Technical Architect and Building Engineer Vicente Olcina Ferrándiz presented the Preliminary Studies for the Memorial Project to the Platform in November 2020. The project convinced and excited the families of the victims because it integrates all the memory sites related to the extermination of Republicans in Paterna (2219 men and 19 women): El Terrer (execution wall), El Camí de la Sang (symbolic route of the bodies' transfer from El Terrer to the cemetery), Els Clots del Silenci (quadrant of the Mass Graves), and Memorial 2238, which will consist in this first phase of columbariums with urns forming a U shape, an agora delimited by the columbariums, and an interpretation center behind the U. The project receives the support of the Valencian Government and the Department of Participation, which includes it in its participatory budgets to be voted on by the citizenry, which broadly supports it.
At present, the Platform is working to incorporate into the 2238 Memorial both the sculptural work by Pablo Sedeño, which was left out of the project due to economic imbalances, and a wall in the form of a lectern overlooking the Memorial's agora with the names of the 2238 murdered victims.