The tasks of exhumation of the cemetery of Sant Francesc to locate the remains of the 58 fatal victims of the Prison of La Savina have been completed after two weeks of intervention.

The team of archaeologists from the Aranzadi Science Society has excavated the earth esplanade located in front of the main gate of the cemetery, specifically the space between rows 1 and 6 on the right side, an area that corresponds to the space indicated as the possible burial place of the victims of La Savina prison according to the documentation of the time and the study carried out by Ibizan historian Antoni Ferrer Abárzuza for ATICS as part of the Second Graves Plan of the Government of the Balearic Islands.

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Work has also been carried out in the area identified as a possible burial site by the research of the Forum for the Memory of Eivissa and Formentera, and included in the Map of Graves of the Government of the Balearic Islands, located a little further west, in front of the columbarium block, as well as in the corridors, where it has been possible to verify that there was never any cemetery use.

The results have only been positive in the esplanade located in front of the entrance to the cemetery, where a total of 20 individual graves have been excavated, located at an average depth of 1.80 metres.

In 15 of the “no remains have been found that can be considered compatible with the prisoners of the prison”, however, in the other 5, there are indications that point to “a possible positive result” of the search, as detailed by the head of Aranzadi, Almudena García-Rubio, at a press conference held this Wednesday at the Consell and in which the president Ana Juan also participated; the regional secretary of Democratic Memory, Jesús Jurado; and the vice-president of the Ibiza and Formentera Memory Forum, and member of the Commission of Graves and Disappeared Persons, Artur Parrón.

“This year it is 80 years since the Francoists closed the Sabina Camp. For eight decades the victims were abandoned without a tombstone in the cemetery of Sant Francesc. Now it is time to do the work that should have been done before: we will continue working to find them, identify them and return them to their families,” said the Regional Secretary for Democratic Memory, Jesús Jurado.

The president of the Formentera Council, for her part, highlighted “the joint work being done by the administrations and the Forum for Memory to try to restore dignity to the victims and their families, despite the fact that we are late”. Ana Juan assured us that “we have to continue working and investigating this black period of our history as the progressive administrations are doing, especially when we have threats from parties that want to leave in oblivion”.

Human remains of 6 individuals compatible with the prison victims

It is in the last rows of the esplanade, specifically in rows 5 and 6, where the human remains of 6 individuals have been found which, due to their characteristics, would be compatible with the victims of the La Savina prison.

They are burials located in the lower part of the tombs, which would correspond to the oldest ones, and all of them belong to male individuals, buried in very simple coffins of which hardly any remains remain.

In one of these burials, corresponding to a young male, a medal of the Virgen de la Milagrosa has been recovered, exactly the same as the one recovered a few months ago in the grave in the cemetery of Son Coletes, in Manacor, and the same as those found in the cemetery of the Fort of San Cristóbal, in Pamplona – a cemetery of prisoners from a Francoist prison – and in the grave of Iragorri, also in Navarre.

In addition, another of the skeletons found showed clear signs of tuberculosis, a very common disease among the prison population. In fact, of the 58 fatal victims in the prison, 18 of them died of tuberculosis according to medical certification. And what’s more: according to the Civil Registry, there are only two people who died of tuberculosis in Formentera in the period 1940-1942 and they were two women.