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STORY: Benita Navacerrada yearns to know where her father was buried more than 80 years ago.

The 91 year-old hopes two mass graves found outside Madrid will yield answers and peace of mind.

Currently being exhumed, they contain the remains of more than 100 people who were executed by forces of late dictator Francisco Franco in 1939, in the aftermath of Spain's Civil War.

“I want to know where he was because we never knew, and seeing that many bodies are coming out, I think that one of them could be my father. I'd feel joy, satisfaction, to be able to say he's resting in peace and not thrown there like a pig. They are all lying piled on top of each other."

The exhumation of the first mass grave started last year with the financial support of Spain's leftist government and led to finding the remains of 12 people.

Forensic scientists are now examining the second, located in a pathway at the cemetery, collecting skulls with signs of bullet holes and bones to genetically identify them and hand them to their families.

A total of 108 civilians, many associated with leftist parties and unions, were executed and buried at the Colmenar Viejo cemetery between April and December 1939.

Navacerrada's father was a union leader and he died when she was seven.

Her mother was in prison at the time and and their five children were left alone.

“What I’m sorry for is that none of my siblings are here to see him. They have all passed away. None of them are watching this. I would like them to enjoy and we could talk and say we are going to get father back, but I have the support of my daughters and that's what I'm left with.”

Spain transitioned to democracy following Franco's death in 1975.

But his legacy still divides Spanish society and the exhumations were a hot topic in a national election in July.

Luis Perez Lara heads a local memory commission. He was arrested and tortured by Franco's security services in the sixties.

"Don't come to us now," he says to critics of exhuming the graves, "and say we're the ones opening wounds."