On 14 September 1940, 532 days after the end of the Spanish Civil War, José Celda was shot by Franco's regime along with 11 other men at the back wall of the Paterna cemetery in Valencia and buried with them in a mass grave. More than seven decades later, and after a long journey through the dark side of a country complexed by its past, Pepica, José's daughter, now an octogenarian who was eight years old when her father was killed, finally managed to locate and recover his remains to restore his dignity.
Leoncio Badía, a young Republican who had long ago been condemned to work as a gravedigger in his village cemetery, played a decisive role in Pepica Celda's personal battle against oblivion. Risking his life, Leoncio, a man obsessed with the meaning of life and the order of the universe, had collaborated secretly for years with the widows of those who had suffered reprisals during the war to identify their bodies, give them the most dignified burial possible, locate their graves and hide messages among their remains, convinced that one day someone would be able to remove them from there.
Paco Roca travels back in time with El abismo del olvido (The Abyss of Oblivion) to recover, together with Rodrigo Terrasa (who plays an important role in documenting and contributing ideas), the true story of Leoncio and José, examples of the tens of thousands of Spaniards who were brutally repressed after the end of the conflict in Spain. But he also accompanies Pepica Celda in her heart-wrenching quest to unravel the miseries of a country obsessed with despising its memory. (Publisher)