Officials check in on dig at Sant Ferran cemetery

Foto exterior cementeriA team of local and regional officials paid a visit today the site where crews have worked since last Wednesday to locate a Civil War-era gravesite near the Sant Ferran cemetery. Led by the president and vice-president of the Formentera Council, Jaume Ferrer and Susana Labrador, and Manel Santana, head of the Govern's department of democratic participation and memory, and including Formentera's provincial councillor, Sílvia Tur; Senator Bernat Picornell and the local administration's social and community involvement secretaries, Vanessa Parellada Sònia Cardona.

Almudena Garcia-Rubio, the forensic archaeologist and anthropologist who is overseeing the effort, said the crew of experts enlisted in the disinterment have performed four probes in the cemetery; two failed to produce results and the remaining pair are still under way. An additional dig is being conducted just outside the cemetery in a spot where evidence suggests the bodies of the victims of the pro-Franco violence might lie. The driving impulse behind the undertaking is to unearth the remains of five individuals —Jaume Ferrer Ferrer, Josep Ribas Marí, Joan Tur Mayans, Jaume Serra Juan and Vicent Cardona Colomar— killed by firing squad during the Spanish Civil War.

President Ferrer said he was hopeful the bodies would be found, calling their unearthing a “potential pathway to healing for the families”. Manel Santana voiced his appreciation for the efforts of historians like Santi Colomar and Artur Parrón in restoring this part of the collective memory. Even should the attempt to locate the graves proves unsuccessful, “sites like this must be honoured and the acts that transpired there forever remembered,” Santana said, pledging that a bid to highlight Civil War grave sites was in sight.

Funding for the archaeological effort in Sant Ferran is possible thanks to a €16,780 Govern grant for the Eivissa-Formentera memory forum and a €4,000 contribution from the Formentera Council.