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The Junta de Andalucía has unveiled its second Democratic Memory Plan, pledging over €2.5 million between 2026 and 2027 to locate, exhume, and identify victims of the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship.
The initiative of the regional government prioritizes the genetic identification and institutional recognition of victims. It aims to settle “an outstanding debt” that officials have described to society and bereaved families.
The Junta’s regional ministers’ council recently approved the plan which will provide more than 200 000 euros for the search and identification of graves or sites where victims of the dictatorship and war are buried.
The plan also allocates 445,881 Euros to locate and exhume victims each year for the next two, while 710,000 Euros will be used to identify remains genetically in each year. The regional government has committed to strengthening the inter-administrative collaboration to deal with the large number of mass graves that are still waiting to be exhumed across the region.
Patricia del Pozo is the regional minister for Culture. She stressed the importance of “the new plan”, which aims at establishing a policy of democratic memory based on democratic values like harmony, coexistence pluralism equality and a culture that promotes peace.
She also noted that the Junta’s top priority was exhumations, and genetic identifications. This would help resolve the massive. We have a huge debt as a community to recover bodies and return them back to the families to give them a dignified funeral.
Del Pozo emphasized that progress was made in the past year in genetic identification of Civil War victims and victims of dictatorships with a contribution extraordinary of 500,000 Euros. She said “the budget for the genetic tests has reached 1,16 million euros, 7 times what was allocated in 2018”.
Since 2019, the Junta exhumed 2840 remains, and analysed DNA from 4146 victims as well 2,700 family members. In the period 2022-2025, the regional ministry that is responsible for this case managed to analyse 2,388 DNA sample taken from victims who were exhumed and 2,668 from their relatives.
The number of samples analysed is much higher than between 2015 and 2018 when only samples from 472 victims and their relatives were analysed. This is why Juanma Moreno highlighted the efforts and progress made in this area by the regional government.
In 2025, the DNA of 968 family members as well as 752 exhumed victim samples were analysed. Patricia del Pozo’s Regional Ministry has dedicated over four million Euros for these DNA sample analysis since 2019. The central government provided only 300,000 Euros during this period.
The new plan is designed to help people understand the historical events that occurred during this period in Spanish history. It will preserve documents, promote research, and disseminate information for scientific study.
The plan also seeks to establish a guiding framework for the development of public policies on democratic memory in Andalucía, contributing to the optimisation of cooperation and coordination between the different governing bodies of Andalucía in terms of democratic memory. It also aims to encourage the participation of Andalusian residents in the creation, promotion, and raising awareness of all actions related with democratic memory.
