HISTAGRA and the city council of Vilagarcia de Arousa will make a remembrance of the cemetery of Rubiáns as a space of memory 

Next Wednesday 18th of December at 11 am will take place in the municipal cemetery of Rubiáns in Vilagarcía de Arousa the inauguration of a monument that remembers the murdered and buried in this place victims of Franco's violence between 1936 and 1939. The project is carried out thanks to the Galician Democratic Memory Plan 2021-2024, since in 2021 this was the first place where work was carried out on the exhumation of remains from the mass grave that was supposed to have existed there.

With the help of the Vilagarcía City Council and the collaboration in the research and implementation of the work by the local cultural association O faiado da Memoria, the work was carried out in the Municipal Cemetery in November 2021. The archaeological works were carried out by the company Tempos Arqueólogos under the supervision of the team. 

The one in the cemetery of Vilagarcía de Arousa was the first grave of those killed by the coup plotters in 1936 to be exhumed following the protocol dictated in 2009 by the group of Agrarian and Political History of the Rural World (Histagra) of the University of Santiago de Compostela with the support of the Institute of Legal Medicine of Galicia (Imelga) and the group of Genomic Medicine of the USC. The documentation collected indicated the presence of 18 corpses, but the fieldwork showed that there is no evidence of them. 

The ceremony, which will take place on 18 December at 11am, will be attended by the coordinator of the Memory Plan team, Professor of Contemporary History at the USC, Lourenzo Fernández Prieto, the Mayor of Vilagarcía de Arousa Alberto Varela, and representatives of the association O faiado da Memoria and the relatives of those buried there. 

The monument, designed by the art director and designer Uqui Permui, is intended to be integrated into the space, adapting to the site with a base in the form of a stone bench or ‘mesh gabions’. 

To find out more about the pit and the work carried out:

https://www.nomesevoces.net/gl/lugares/fosas/1/fosas-de-filgueira

Data: 

Day: 18 December 2024 
Time: 11:00 h 
Place: Rubiáns Cemetery (Vilagarcía de Arousa)