内戦の傷伝える廃虚の村　スペイン

【ベルチテＡＦＰ＝時事】スペインの多くの村がそうであるように、北部アラゴン州のベルチテも１９３６～３９年の内戦で徹底的に破壊された。だが、今も内戦末期の姿をほぼとどめているのはこの村だけだ。（写真はスペイン内戦時の廃虚のまま残るアラゴン州ベルチテの通り）
　散乱するがれきの中に辛うじて立つ時計台、大聖堂に残る弾痕や迫撃砲の穴──。集団墓地で人骨を掘り起こしながら、考古学者のイグナシオ・ロレンソ氏は「男性、女性、子どもも見つかっています」と言う。
　「左派政党に投票したこと、あるいは組合に加入していたことが罪とされました」
　ロレンソ氏のチームが発見した９０人の遺骨の中には、手足を縛られたものや、拷問の痕が残るものもあった。
　生存者の証言によると内戦初期、フランシスコ・フランコ将軍が率いた国民戦線によるベルチテの弾圧では、約３０００人の住民のうち３５０人が処刑された。
　「スペインのホロコースト」の著者で英国の歴史家ポール・プレストン氏は、前線から遠く離れた場所で殺されたスペイン人は約２０万人で、うち１５万人はフランコ軍の支配地域、残りは共和派地域で殺害されたと推測している。
　左派・社会労働党のペドロ・サンチェス首相は今年６月、「失踪者は今なお１１万４０００人」に上り、その大半が共和派だと述べた。サンチェス政権は内戦中の失踪者の遺骨発掘を「国家の責任」とする法案を提出し、７月に下院で可決された。
　内戦後にベルチテを訪れたフランコは、プロパガンダのために廃虚のまま保存するよう命じた。生き残った住民のための新しい村は、その隣につくられた。現在、廃虚はフェンスで囲まれ、ガイド付きツアーでしか訪れることができない。

■「世界でもここだけ」
　村の石畳の清掃と修復を行っている考古学チームにボランティアとして参加する米国人学生エリー・トーンクイストさんは「このように過去に起きたことをはっきりと思い起こさせる場所は、世界でもここだけだと思います」と言った。
　しかし、内戦は今もスペインを分断している。左派政党は犠牲となった共和派の人々の名誉を回復させたがっているが、右派は古傷を暴く行為だとして非難している。
　右派・国民党のベルチテ村長、カルメロ・ペレス氏は、内戦は「非常にデリケートな問題」だと認める。それでもこの村は「スペインでも唯一無二」であり、「尊厳を取り戻し」、平和な場を創造できる所だと語った。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2022/08/10-14:00）

Like many Spanish villages, Belchite was devastated by Spain's 1936-39 Civil War.
But it is the only one which looks largely as it did at the end of the conflict, with piles of rubble strewn about, the clock tower barely standing and mass graves.
Here we found men, women and children, said Ignacio Lorenzo, a 70-year-archaeologist as he exhumes the last skeletons from a mass grave in this village in the northern region of Aragon.
Their crime was to have voted for left-wing parties or to be members of a union, he said.
The siege of Belchite was part of a Republican offensive in 1937 to capture Zaragoza, the capital of Aragon, from the Nationalists led by General Francisco Franco.
Franco went on to win the war and establish a dictatorship that lasted until his death in 1975.
The repression of Belchite by Nationalist forces at the start of the war resulted in the execution of 350 of its roughly 3,000 residents, according to witness testimony from survivors.
The grandparents of veteran Spanish singer Johan Manuel Serrat were among those killed.
Lorenzo and his team have so far found the remains of 90 missing Republicans in the cemetery, some of them with their hands and feet bound. Others displayed signs of having been tortured.
British historian Paul Preston, author of The Spanish Holocaust, estimates that 200,000 Spaniards were killed far from the front lines -- 150,000 in areas controlled by Franco's forces and the rest in Republican areas.
Franco's regime honoured its own dead, but left its opponents buried in unmarked graves scattered across the country.
There are still 114,000 disappeared, mostly Republicans, Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said earlier this week. Only Cambodia had more missing people, he added.
His government has drafted a law that, for the first time, will make exhumations of those who disappeared during the war a state responsibility. The bill faces its first parliamentary vote on Thursday.
- 'Forget it' -
Belchite was captured by Franco's forces shortly after the start of the war, then taken over by the Republican camp a year later before being recaptured by the Nationalists.
The fighting left at least 5,000 dead and completely destroyed the village.
After the war, Franco visited Belchite and ordered it to be abandoned and preserved in its ruined states for propaganda reasons. A new village was built next door for the surviving residents.
The ruins of Belchite are now fenced off and can only be visited via a guided tour.
A rupture took place after the civil war, the past was left behind, said Mari Angeles Lafoz, a socialist councilwoman in Belchite.
Domingo Serrano, the mayor of Belchite between 1983 and 2003, strove during his mandate to preserve what was left of the old village but lacked any real means.
He himself was born in 1946 in old Belchite, in one of the few houses that had survived the war.
We let it go downhill, said Serrano. It's as if we thought it was better to forget it.
But the seven million euros ($7.0 million) recently earmarked by the government for old Belchite were coming 40 years too late, he said.
- 'Sensitive issue' -
The ruins of Belchite -- which include a cathedral pockmarked with bullet holes and gouged by mortar shells -- were visited by 40,000 people in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted travel.
It has been dubbed Spain's Pompeii, after the Roman city frozen in time when it was buried under ash from a volcanic eruption in 79 AD, said archaeologist Alfonso Fanjul.
The 48-year-old president of the Spanish Association of Military Archaeology heads a team of volunteers from around the world who clean and restore the village's original cobblestones.
I think it's really one of the only places in the world that can this starkly remind you of something that has happened like this, said one volunteer, Ellie Tornquist, a 24-year-old student from Chicago in the United States.
But the civil war continues to divide Spain.
While leftwing parties want to rehabilitate the memory of the Republican victims of the conflict, the right accuses them of seeking to open the wounds of the past.
The current mayor of Belchite, Carmelo Perez of the conservative Popular Party, admits the war is a very sensitive issue.
But the village is a unique place in Spain where we can restore dignity and create a place of peace, he said.