The third archaeological intervention in the surroundings of the Hostal d'Aidí, in Pallars Sobirà, has ended without locating the mass grave in which nine people arrested, tortured and murdered in May 1938 were being sought. The operation took place between April 13 and 24.
The result keeps open one of the main unknowns of the Francoist repression in the region, because the documentation and previous work place the assassinations at that point, but three excavation campaigns have not confirmed where the victims were buried.
The third excavation did not find the pit next to the Hostal d'Aidí
The Directorate General of Democratic Memory, attached to the Department of Justice and Democratic Quality, attributes the lack of results to various hypotheses about the state of the land. The agency points to possible alterations due to natural causes, subsequent human interventions, or even the destruction of the grave.
The search at Hostal d'Aidí had already been attempted on two previous occasions, in 2016 and 2023. In the campaign two years ago, moreover, the work expanded the prospecting area north of the C-13 road.
Now, the third intervention has not allowed verifying the exact location of the burial either, despite that enclave concentrating one of the most concrete episodes of Francoist violence documented in Pallars Sobirà.
Nine neighbors were murdered there in May 1938
On May 23 and 24, 1938, nine people were arrested in their homes, taken to the vicinity of the Hostal d'Aidí, tortured, and murdered. The location of that mass grave is part of the work to recover victims of the Civil War in the region.
A month earlier, in April 1938, the Francoist 62nd Division occupied Pallars Sobirà under the command of General Antonio Sagardía Ramos. During that offensive, the troops executed 67 civilians from the region without prior trial.
The intervention this April was carried out at the same time as the search for the Prat del Rector mass grave, in La Guingueta d'Àneu, within the same territorial scope of democratic memory actions.
The previous campaign at Hostal d'Aidí, carried out in 2023, had already extended the prospecting north of the C-13, and the last action concluded again without confirming the burial site of the nine victims from May 23 and 24, 1938.