As the adage goes, "History is written by the winners" and the Spanish Civil War (1936War ( -1939 is a example of how difficult it is to revert this process. Franco's regime developed a range of narratives focused on a) the justification of the military rebellion against the democratically elected Second Republic government, b) the "damnatio memoriae" of the Republican armed forces and c) the development of a collective guilt about the war. The transition from fascist dictatorship to democracy did not contest Francoist official discourse and forged a "pact of oblivion" based on the idea that Spanish society should look into the future and forget about the conflict at all levels: from personal memories to cultural heritage. One of the victims of this process of targeted forgetfulness was the Republican Air Force because it was an uncomfortable thorn on Francoist narratives. If the Republic was immersed in chaos and its army non-existent then how did it manage to contest the skies against the most modern German and Italian aircraft? This work describes the activities developed by a long-term public archaeology project designed to rediscover the memory of the people that formed the Republican Air Force. This multifaceted initiative explored the materiality of air warfare through a combination of battlefield archaeology, educational research, museum exhibitions and community engagement. The results presented here are an example of how community-based archaeology projects can promote new critical narratives and rediscover silenced voices even after decades of heavily-biased official history.

El combat de Raïmats, succeït el darrer dia de la batalla de l’Ebre (15 de novembre de 1938) ha estat investigat des de diverses òptiques per part del grup de recerca DIDPATRI en una perspectiva interdisciplinar i transversal. La recerca va començar amb una petició de l’associació cívica Lo Riu el 2013 a la Universitat de Barcelona que van aconduir a una intensa campanya arqueològica en una clara dinàmica de recerca pública. En els anys posteriors i fins el 2018 les accions sobre Raïmats s’han multiplicat incorporant experiències sobre museografia a l’aire lliure;  visites escolars; turisme de camps de batalla; recreació històrica i generació d’iconografia didàctica. Tot plegat la dinàmica no exhaurida, es contextualitza també en una dinàmica pedagògica d’investigació acció en la qual els plantejaments didàctics assoleixen protagonisme. L’experiència transversal de Raïmats incorpora també una vessant explícita de memòria en tant que el lloc s’ha convertit en un referent significatiu de la batalla de l’Ebre.