On Wednesday, we were delighted to receive an unexpected visit to the Casa de la Memoria by Juanjo Marí and Almudena García-Rubio. Both are archaeologists and Almudena specialises in funerary disciplines and forensic anthropology; since 2003 she has participated in numerous exhumations of mass graves and identifications of victims of Francoist repression all over the country.
In November and December 2021, Almudena coordinated the Aranzadi Scientific Society’s specialist team which recovered the remains of Aurora Picornell, Catalina Flaquer Pascual, Antònia Pascual Flaquer, Maria Pascual Flaquer and Belarmina González Rodríguez, who were known as the ‘red women of Molinar’. They were all assassinated by Falangists in January 1937 and their bodies thrown into a mass grave at the Son Coletes de Manacor cemetery in Mallorca.
The name of Aurora Picornell Femenías, a seamstress, trade union leader and one of the main leaders of the Balearic Federation of the PCE, hit the headlines in June this year after the president of the Balearics goverment, Gabriel Le Senne of the Vox political party, tore up a photograph of her which was held up during a debate over the derogation of the region’s Democratic Memory law.
The outrage this provoked led the historical memory movement not only to condemn the incident but to raise further awareness of Aurora, her life and what happened to her and her fellow victims.
The day after the incident in the Balearics parliament, we hung a portrait of Almudena in our exhibition room at the Casa de la Memoria La Sauceda as a tribute to her and the young women who were executed with her.
