“The pulls out of convicts of the day, sent from the different penitentiary centers, were previously put in the chapel so that if they wished they could confess. Shortly after, they were handcuffed and put on trucks to be taken to Paterna. According to different testimonies, the prisoners arrived by truck to the same shooting gallery, and depending on the number of those sentenced to death, different rounds of execution could be carried out. The population of Paterna who lived in the surrounding areas heard the shots of each of the executions.”
This story is described in the annex that justifies the beginning of the process for the declaration of the surroundings of the Paterna wall where 2,238 people were shot as a Place of Memory and its inscription in the catalog of places and itineraries of the democratic memory of the Valencian Community .
The data
In Paterna, 2,238 people from 191 towns in the Valencian Community and 60 other Spanish municipalities were shot.
A file that was published yesterday in the Official Gazette of the Generalitat and that will serve to remember the atrocities experienced in what is known as the ‘Wall of Spain’ in Paterna, where 2,238 people from 191 towns in the Valencian Community and 60 others were shot. Spanish municipalities.
Studies say that El Terrer, the official name of the wall, was the place chosen by the dictatorship to murder thousands of people. “It would be the second place in the national territory with the most executions, after the Eastern cemetery in Madrid.”
‘modus operandi’
The prisoners were raised on it so that when the execution shots were fired, they would fall to the ground and from there they would be picked up by a wagon that would take them directly to the Paterna cemetery.
As stated in the file, according to oral and bibliographical sources, the prisoners arrived in the truck to the same shooting gallery and the execution could be done in two different ways.
The first of them was to place them against the wall and carry out the execution (this form was the usual one throughout the Spanish geography); but in Paterna a second way of carrying out the firing squads was contemplated: Taking into account the execution time (morning or afternoon) and the position of the sun on the horizon, the victims could have been placed on the wall.
These same testimonies also indicate that taking advantage of the shape of the shooting gallery, the inmates were brought up to it so that when the execution shots were fired, they would fall to the ground and from there be picked up by a wagon that would take them directly to the cemetery. from Paterna, just 500 meters from El Terrer. The path that this chariot traveled was popularly called the Camí de la Sang, due to the trail of blood that formed after each execution.
Grave 113 of the Paterna cemetery, of reprisals in the dictatorship.
In fact, the City Council of Paterna, satisfied with the procedure initiated by the Ministry of Transparency and Democratic Quality, is processing a modification of its general plan to include, in the Municipal Catalog of Assets and Protected Spaces as an Asset of Local Relevance, the very Paredón de España, the Camí de la Sang and the mass graves of the Paterna cemetery.
Historiography indicates that the first executed in Paterna were on April 2, 1939, just three days after the Francoist troops entered the city of Valencia; “being rare the week in which executions were not carried out, at a rate of approximately fifteen to thirty people in each one of the sacks, although on occasions, as was the case in November 1939, seven sacks were carried out, with a total of 318 sentenced, executing at some point fifty people in the same day”.
November 1939
50 people were executed in one day
Given these conclusive data, the file argues the “relevance” for the Valencian Community of the wall. “In the Valencian Community there are few examples of this type of space; This is the case of the city of Castellón de la Plana […] where more than 700 victims were shot, in the Municipal Cemetery of Dénia (52 shot), next to the old wall of what was a civil cemetery that still preserves the impacts of some shots. The walls of the cemeteries of Alzira and Llíria were also used as such”, explain the same sources.
The deputy mayor of the Paterna City Council, Julio Fernández, yesterday expressed his satisfaction with this recognition “which symbolizes the dignity of this necessary enclave so as not to forget and which is the result of all the work carried out by the Paterna City Council, the Ministry and the families of the victims for the preservation of democratic memory and the consolidation of values such as freedom, respect and tolerance”.
Recognition
The declaration aims to “guarantee its valuation, preservation and protection as a tribute and recognition of the dignity of the people murdered there”
This declaration, as stated in the DOCV, aims to “guarantee its valuation, preservation and protection as a tribute and recognition of the dignity of the people murdered there and their families, in response to a historical demand and as a symbol of restitution of the offenses and treatment received by the victims”.
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