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Spanish Mark Civil War Milestone; Unease Lingers

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the start of the Spanish Civil War. In Spain, there are no official commemoration ceremonies. That's in keeping with the silence with which Spaniards have generally treated the war - and the Franco dictatorship that followed.

But many, including the now-elderly children of victims, are increasingly seeking some kind of closure. In the village of Parillas, residents will finally be able to give a proper burial to parents and grandparents executed during the conflict. A team of archeologists will exhume their remains from four mass graves outside the town.

The government of Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, whose own grandfather was executed during the war, has drawn up a new law to honor those who suffered during the war or under the Franco dictatorship.

But seven decades after the Spanish civil war, it is, in many ways, still being fought.

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Jerome Socolovsky is the Audio Storytelling Specialist for NPR Training. He has been a reporter and editor for more than two decades, mostly overseas. Socolovsky filed stories for NPR on bullfighting, bullet trains, the Madrid bombings and much more from Spain between 2002 and 2010. He has also been a foreign and international justice correspondent for The Associated Press, religion reporter for the Voice of America and editor-in-chief of Religion News Service. He won the Religion News Association's TV reporting award in 2013 and 2014 and an honorable mention from the Association of International Broadcasters in 2011. Socolovsky speaks five languages in addition to his native Spanish and English. He holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and graduate degrees from Hebrew University and the Harvard Kennedy School. He's also a sculler and a home DIY nut.