On the Feast of the Assumption 80 years ago, a group of priests was executed in northern Spain by Republicans. Yet the nation remains divided over the legacy of the Civil War and the anniversary of its outbreak has not been widely commemorated

In a discreetly unsignposted small clearing off a narrow country road in Aragon, northern Spain, lies a small obelisk and cross covered in flowers. On it, carved in stone, are the words: “They died for the cause of Jesus.” This marks the spot where in the summer of 1936, during the early days of the Spanish Civil War, a group of Claretian priests, brothers and seminarians were executed.

Three kilometres away, through vineyards and olive groves, is the medieval town of Barbastro, home of the seminary from where they were abducted. Partly destroyed during the subsequent conflict, it has since been rebuilt as a museum dedicated to the memory of those who died.

“This a special place,” the soft-spoken and unassuming curator, Fr Carlos Latorre, tells me. “It offers a message of hope, of forgiveness or reconciliation, of love for Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, the Church, and the Claretian congregation.”
The museum details the story of the martyrdom, which began with a brutal raid on the seminary by some 60 armed anarchists, just one episode in the particularly vicious persecution of the Catholic Church in Republican-held territory in this part of Aragon and neighbouring Catalonia during the 1930s.