Jose Luis Cubo watched as forensic scientists dug up the body of a man his grandfather had helped to bury at the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 after an execution by fascist forces.

The remains pulled from a muddy pit in Vegas de Matute farmland, 75 km (47 miles) north of Madrid, are either those of Luis Garcia Hernandez, a 42-year-old teacher and union member, or of Julio Maroto Ortega, 60, a road worker, activists from non-profit group Historic Memory Recovery Association believe. The exhumation is part of a drive started by victim associations in 2000 and picked up by the Socialist-led government in 2018 to revisit and resolve past crimes under fascist dictator Francisco Franco.

In Vegas de Matute, Cubo, 83, said his grandfather Lorenzo Cubo had seen a truck from the Falange f

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