Monday marks 80 years since the uprising led by Gen. Francisco Franco plunged Spain into civil war. But Pere Bartolomé, 93, says he can still remember the day Franco’s soldiers ransacked his village, confiscating family booklets and photos.

Some of those documents were returned to him only this month, after being kept hidden for decades as part of an enormous police archive that Franco used to incriminate his opponents.

“This is just a very unexpected and happy moment,” Mr. Bartolomé said, shuffling on a cane and holding back the tears, after the ceremony at the Catalan national archive in which documents were returned to him and other Catalan families.