The hunt for Britons killed fighting in Spain's civil war

Graham Keeley talks to researchers using DNA to uncover bodies of freedom fighters and hears from desperate families

- Graham Keeley

Somewhere in a field in Spain, lie the remains of George Green. Like about 2,500 other Britons, he left his family and job behind to fight against fascism in the Spanish civil war. In 1938, when the International Brigade made a last stand against the advancing armies of General Francisco Franco at the Battle of Ebro in Catalonia, he lost his life when enemy troops overran his trench. Nearly 90 years later, the whereabouts of his body, like hundreds of others, have never been traced.

For the first time in Spain, researchers in Catalonia are searching for the remains of International Brigade fighters, many of which were dumped in unmarked mass graves during the bitter conflict between 1936 and 1939.

The Catalan Democratic Memory directorate is appealing to the living relatives of these men and women to get in touch so they can match up their DNA to prove the link to their loved ones. They hope to match these people with their relatives and give them a dignified burial decades after they lost their lives in the struggle against Franco.

Researchers can send a DNA kit to families in Britain and other countries around the world. These relatives can give a sample of saliva which can then be used to link up with any remains which are unearthed.

Using hospital archives and military records which were sent to the Soviet Union after the Republican government lost the civil war in 1939, researchers in Catalonia can trace possible sites where International Brigade fighters fell.