The search for Olivero, a reprisal born in Piornal, begins in Burgohondo

This Wednesday work began in a town in Ávila to try to recover the remains of Andrés Iglesias Prieto, alias ‘Olivero’. He is an anti-Francoist fighter from Piornal (Cáceres) who was allegedly executed by the Civil Guard in 1947.

This March 16 began the tasks of exhumation, study and possible identification of the bone remains found in the Avila Burgohondo cemetery. It is believed that three anti-Franco guerrillas rest there, one of them the piornalego.

These works are being made possible thanks to the work of the ARMHEx (Association for the Recovery of the Historical Memory of Extremadura), in collaboration with the Piornal City Council.

The association recalls how the events took place in the midst of the Franco dictatorship. On January 23, 1947, an assault operation was carried out on a house in the Burgohondo countryside where it is believed that the anti-Francoist combatants were hiding, who were killed.

In addition to the man from Extremadura, two other guerrillas lost their lives there: Mariano Álvarez Escobar, alias ‘Antonio’, head of the group and a native of Fuensalida (Toledo), and 20-year-old Tomás López Gutiérrez ‘Rubio’ from Madrid.

Remains in the Burgohondo ossuary. /

ARMHEx

clandestine grave

Once executed, the corpses were “buried without being identified, in a clandestine grave in the cemetery of the town of Avila, their remains being subsequently exhumed and transferred to an ossuary within the same cemetery without there being any mention or identification of the place. and without the relatives receiving any information about it.

During the work that began yesterday, the bone remains will be exhumed and studied. The bones will be identified (if possible) and DNA tests will be carried out. In case of being identified, the remains will be returned to the families and a civic act of homage will be carried out, to later be buried in their places of origin.

If the bones are not identified, they will be reinterred in the Burgohondo cemetery. In this case, if possible, a tribute plaque will be placed in the cemetery with the name of the three people, the date and the circumstances of their death.

The technical team that is working on the cemetery is made up of the physical anthropologist Ricardo Moreno Alía, Sara Poveda Polo (technical archaeologist and anthropologist), José Manuel Corbacho Palacios (president of the ARMHEx and lawyer) and the historian Ángel Olmedo Alonso.

As it is an intervention carried out outside Extremadura, the ARMHEx has had to request authorizations from the Government of Castilla y León and the City Council of the town of Burgohondo, “entities that at all times and to date have shown their full availability”.