Valley of the rising

Their work is not as flashy or high-profile as the transferral of Franco's remains, by helicopter on live TV, from Cuelgamuros to a regular cemetery in Madrid. But it's much more important than political stunts. If completed, the forensic project will give families of unidentified victims of Francoism the chance to properly bury relatives after decades of not knowing the location of their remains.

The scientists' work at Cuelgamuros has a basic human significance that transcends political differences - or so you might think. But the Spanish right, led by the Popular Party (PP), dismisses the entire historical memory project as pointlessly divisive, as it has done ever since the movement took off in Spain in the early 2000s.

Alberto Feijóo's promise to repeal the memory law if the PP takes power after next month's general election would almost certainly prevent the continuance of forensic work in Cuelgamuros. It would probably also halt plans to turn the former mausoleum into a museum and educational centre focusing on the Civil War and Franco's ensuing, forty-year dictatorship. Who wins in that situation? The PP's intransigence in this respect encourages a head-in-the-sand approach to history and prevents families who want a dignified burial for their long-dead relatives - many of whom were thrown, unidentified, into roadside ditches - from performing a fundamental human rite.

Vox goes further, arguing that Sánchez's government is "profaning graves". Not in this case, because there are no graves to "profane". The lead forensic scientist at Cuelgamuros told The Guardian last week that the remains of Republicans arrived at the site in boxes marked only with the town they'd come from and how many bodies they contained (the remains of Nationalists, by contrast, were fully identified by names and surnames); she added that there are thousands of them, "stacked from floor to ceiling like shoeboxes". It would surely be impossible to defile such anonymous, undignified resting places.