They took everything from my great-grandfather Silvestre Indias Carvajal and left us with nothing but his story, which was buried at the bottom of a 30-metre-deep well in south-west Spain for 87 years.Silvestre worked as a municipal clerk in his small home town of Feria in Extremadura. He was given the job in recognition for his service in the war in Morocco, a conflict to which he was dispatched by lottery.
Feria is a small town in the south-eastern Spanish region of Extremadura, which sits atop a mountain range. It had barely 4,000 inhabitants in 1936 when it was occupied by Gen Franco’s rebel troops. The subsequent repression was swift and merciless and anyone deemed an enemy of the coup was eliminated. The estimated death toll in Feria is 97, making it one of the hardest-hit towns in the region.
He was living a quiet life – married with three children and another on the way – when Gen Francisco Franco began his coup against the Republican government on 18 July 1936.One of his duties as town clerk was to guard imprisoned Franco sympathisers who might have joined the uprising.
This street in the town of Feria leads to the church where suspected supporters of Franco’s coup were imprisoned and guarded by my grandfather Silvestre Indias Carvajal.
