Landscape Of Secrets

Archaeologists confront painful memories of the Spanish Civil War

- Samir S. Patel

ASTURIAS IS SPAIN’S INNER keep. This region on the northern coast has a “moat,” the Bay of Biscay, on one side, and the Contabrian Mountains as its southern ramparts. The local culture, which dates back to the Paleolithic and took shape under Celtic influence in the Iron Age, has proven resistant to outside influences. The Romans subdued the Astures, as the province’s people are called, but never truly conquered them. The Astures repulsed the Goths in the fourth century, and halted the Moorish invasion in the eighth. Asturias was the birthplace of the Reconquista, or the Christian reconquest of Islamic Spain. Even today, the province is an autonomous principality, and the heir to the Spanish throne is the “Prince of Asturias.” Its mountains are the last habitat of Spain’s brown bears. Asturias was not, however, spared from a threat that arrived from within. In the late 1930s, the Spanish Civil War divided cities, towns, and even families throughout the land. Today, concealed in this majestic, peaceful terrain is archaeological evidence of a unique aspect of the struggle as it played out here in the north—but resistance to unearthing these painful memories is profound.