This initiative seeks the potential holding of a civil trial to allow the annulment of criminal cases, final judgments, and administrative sanctioning files issued by Francoist authorities, which are still in force against the victims.
Since its inception in 2021, the University of Granada's project, 'Barranco de Víznar. Place of Memory', has located 29 mass graves in the area, from which 194 bodies have been recovered. Of these, 40 are women and 150 are men.
The Genetics Laboratory of the University of Granada has identified 11 of these bodies, and the identification process remains active, with new positive results expected. In parallel, the Prosecutor's Office is conducting investigations into possible crimes against humanity, following the exhumation of 49 bodies between 2021 and 2022 from seven graves.
These bodies, 24 women and 25 men aged between 36 and 42 years, wore clothing from the first half of the 20th century and showed signs of violent death, with evidence of firearm trauma in almost all cases. The Prosecutor's Office's decision was based on documentation provided by Professor Francisco Carrión, from the Department of Prehistory and Archaeology of the University of Granada, who is responsible for the work in the Barranco de Víznar.
The historical, anthropological, and sociological studies carried out determine that the remains could correspond to victims of "forced disappearances and murders" committed in the context of the repression suffered by the population of Granada as a consequence of the Civil War and the Francoist dictatorship.
In the decree that opened the investigation, the Prosecutor's Office indicated that the facts could provisionally constitute crimes of homicide, murder, illegal detention, and/or forced disappearance, within the framework of crimes against humanity. The State Attorney General's Office appointed Montserrat Luque Molina as the provincial delegate prosecutor for Human Rights and Democratic Memory in mid-2025, allowing Granada to have a specialized prosecutor to directly follow these cases.
The main objective is to ensure the rights to truth, justice, reparation, and guarantees of non-repetition, which are fundamental pillars of the Democratic Memory Law, and to facilitate more direct contact with victims, memory associations, and relevant entities.
