Anthropological and genetic analyzes have confirmed the discovery of the remains of anti-Francoist Cipriano Martos, a FRAP fighter who died in 1973 after ingesting sulfuric acid under torture during interrogation at the Civil Guard barracks in Reus (Tarragona). This was announced by the Ministry of Justice, Rights and Memory, headed by Gemma Ubasart, after the President of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, announced on January 11 that the technicians charged with carrying out the exhumation work at Pit 11 -67 North of Reus Cemetery found the remains of a body consistent with the physical description of Martos and with the location appearing in the municipal burial records.
In particular, the archaeologists who have been working on the site since December found a body that was subjected to a full autopsy and, more precisely, Martos was autopsied by two coroners after he died on September 17, 1973 as a victim of acid ingestion. Brimstone during an interrogation. The remains of this body – one of the 41 people exhumed from this communal grave in Reus Cemetery – were taken to the laboratory to begin anthropological and DNA studies, taking genetic samples and comparing the data with those registered there Match relatives to the genetic identification program.
The results of those tests, the ministry said in a statement, “have confirmed that the remains match those of Cipriano Martos,” making him the twentieth person to be identified and exhumed in Catalonia since the genetic identification program was set up in 2016 .
Born in 1942 in a group of houses in the municipality of Loja (Granada) to a poor peasant family, Cipriano Martos emigrated to Sabadell (Barcelona) in 1969, where he became politicized and joined the PCE and FRAP. Already in hiding, the party assigned him to a cell in Reus, where he was held in August 1973 by the Civil Guard, who interrogated him for more than two days until he was forced to take sulfuric acid, to the Hospital de Sant Joan, where he was held Died for 21 days without his family knowing where he was. The case was included in the 2014 macro-lawsuit in Argentina’s courts for crimes committed by the Franco regime.
In February last year, the then Ministry of Justice, Lourdes Ciuró, publicly announced that exhumation work would begin in the second half of 2022, and in March Parliament approved – with the only dissenting vote from Vox – a resolution tabled by PSC units, who supported this initiative.
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