El abismo del olvido (The Abyss of Oblivion) (2023)
Paco Roca (1969)
Rodrigo Terrasa (1978)
295 pages
Along with grisly pitched battles and destructive city-sieges, the Spanish Civil War (July 1936 – April 1939) also included wide-spread violence far from the frontlines. Although the two sides – supporters of the elected Republican government and of the rebel nationalist military junta that rose up against it – quickly established control over particular regions of the country, many cities, towns and villages behind the lines experienced what often became a kind of vigilante violence. This included killings not only to eliminate partisans of the side not in power in that area, but also, under the cover of the general political and social disruption, to settle old scores.
During the war, both sides perpetrated such violence. But, after the war, the fascist dictatorship continued summary executions of those accused of clandestinely supporting the Republic, and some townspeople took advantage of the opportunity to incriminate and have executed those who had sided with the Republic during the war and against whom they harbored a grudge.
Estimates of the numbers killed during and after the war remain the subject of significant scholarly disagreement. Many people disappeared, with some executed while others fled for their lives. Those killed had their bodies unceremoniously dumped into common graves – the records of their death often deliberately destroyed in an attempt to hide the extent of these transgressions.
Post-dictatorship Spain has experienced a long running debate about how to deal with these mass graves – fosa in Spanish; things came to a head with the passage in 2007, by the then ruling left-wing party, of the The Law of Historical Memory, authorizing government funds for families who sought to exhume the remains of family members. Although families of the victims welcomed the opportunity to get closure through a proper identification and burial of their loved ones’ remains, many on the right decried the law as unnecessarily opening old wounds.
Although the topic has remained a political football, with right-wing governments in Spain eliminating funding and left-wing government’s reinstating it, some graves have been exhumed. In the graphic novel The Abyss of Oblivion (El abismo del olvido ) Spanish cartoonist Paco Roca and journalist Rodrigo Terrasa tell the story of the exhumation of one such mass grave, fosa 126 in the town cemetery of Paterna, in Valencia, as a way of illustrating the past horrors and present-day opportunities for dignity and reckoning such exhumations represent for Spanish families who had a loved one executed.
By using the graphic novel format, the pair transform what could have been a dry chronicle of history into a powerful, visual story, one that brings to life people who so long ago disappeared into the anonymity of a mass grave. It reveals, too, their relatives’ long years of suffering, as well as their tireless efforts to bring closure to their decades of trauma.
The story opens with the execution of 15 men in September 1940, more than a year after the end of the Spanish Civil War, and their burial in fosa 126, one of 180 such mass graves in the cemetery in Paterna alone. The scene then shifts to some sixty years later, as archeologists begin their exhumation of the grave; as one archaeologist notes, they approach their work with dual goals:
'The first is to recover and identify the bodies for those family members who want to obtain them…. The second function of the excavation [is to] document it as the archeologists we are, with engagement and scientific rigor … as if this was a crime scene.'
‘Which it is,’ [points out a colleague]. (40)
Shifting smoothly between past and present, Roca and Tarrasa explore the histories of several of the men in the grave site, and in parallel the lives of their descendants. They build their narrative around one family in particular – exploring the life of one of the men executed and his daughter’s long struggle to get permission to have the fosa in which he is thought to have been buried exhumed. She seeks to have her father’s remains recovered and identified, so she can bury them next to her mother.
And, like the dual goals of the archeologists, the story Roca and Tarrasa illustrate serves two purposes. On the one hand, they tell a powerful history of the evils of the fascist regime as it continued to seek out and persecute anyone thought to be an enemy, as well as the depravity of those among its flunkies who leveraged their positions to have those they disliked arrested and executed. The story pointedly demonstrates the pervasive environment of fear created – which was, of course, the regime’s intent.
By tying the narrative to particular families, however, the pair manage to rescue at least some few of the vast number of the executed, and their families, from the abyss of oblivion that had engulfed them. By telling their history, both in the text but also through illustrations of their home life and the events they experienced, the story gives voice to the lives they lived. And it reveals how much the victims and their families lost, from the moment of arrest up to execution, and through the long decades that followed. It also explores the courage of those who quietly found ways to undermine the regime’s attempts to cow people into submission as well as the enduring strength of the families who for so many years kept the memory of their loved ones alive.
While at times heartrending, Roca and Tarrasa also tell a story of hope and strength. Of how so many people caught in the violence and destruction of autocracies and dictatorships managed to persevere. And of how, to adapt a quote attributed to Martin Luther King, the arc of the moral universe though long, does indeed sometimes bend toward closure, if not necessarily justice.
Other notes and information:
As an epilogue, a short prose essay, with a sprinkling of photographs, details the facts of the case of the main characters in the story.
Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf
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