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Santi Donaire

A group of forensic experts prepare for the 2020 excavation of a mass grave in Paterna, thought to hold the bodies of more than 100 people.

The skull of a victim found in a mass grave in Paterna is examined during a forensic investigation conducted by the Department of Biology at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in 2021. All bodies found in mass graves are sent for genetic and anthropological study, in order to identify them and their cause of death.

Forensic scientist María Fortuna cleans a set of teeth found during the 2017 exhumation of a mass grave in Paterna.

The skull of a murdered person found in 2017 during the excavation of a mass grave of people killed by the Franco dictatorship in the 1940s. Most victims appear with a bullet hole in the skull, a sign of their fate.

Amparo Orts Granell, 86, poses on the sofa at her house in a village in Valencia, 2020. Her father was killed on October 23, 1940 when she was 5. In March 2022, Orts was able to bury the identified remains in her hometown of Meliana. "Here lies José Orts Alberto, who was shot on October 23, 1940 at the hands of Franco's regime for being a councilman in Meliana," says the tombstone, which now sits next to his late wife.

Iker García Múñoz, 14, whose holds a photograph of his great-great-grandfather whose family believes he was buried at a mass grave in Paterna . "When the grave was opened, my mother told me that my great-grandfather burst into tears," he said. "I have never seen my great-grandfather cry in my life."

Rosa Coscollá, who died in 2021, holds a photograph of her father, who was killed by Franco's dictatorship in 1940 in Valencia. DNA testing determined the identity of her father's remains, but Coscollá passed away still waiting for answers.

A family gathers at a cemetery on the outskirts of Valencia in July 2021 for the reburial of a relative whose remains from eight decades ago was recently exhumed from a mass grave.

The faces of people who disappeared during the Franco dictatorship cover a banner during a 2018 rally held by relatives of the victims in downtown Madrid near City Hall.

A sketch by a forensic scientist in 2017 deciphers the disposition of bodies found in a mass grave in Paterna. Experts attempt to individualise each body in order to facilitate better identification. Evidence also is collected to determine the cause of death.