SPANISH CIVIL WAR – TEXT FOR HIGH SCHOOL LECTURE – 2013
During the period between January 28 and February 12, 1939, 500,000 Spaniards—civilians and soldiers, women and children—crowded onto the roads leading them to the French border. This was La Retirada. It was the flight of a Spain divided in two, which, after the famous Battle of the Ebro, left the Republican Army exhausted and wounded after long and bitter fighting. The Nationalist troops of General Franco were gaining ground and launched their campaign in Catalonia; on January 26, Barcelona fell. Thus began the long march toward freedom. A chaotic, desperate, exhausting march. The main roads were under enemy fire and bombardment. Gutted horses, dying wounded, and corpses littered the ground. Everyone hurried forward, carrying what little they had left: suitcases, clothes, carts. Hunger and the freezing January cold made the crossing of the Pyrenees even more difficult. Buried sometimes under more than a meter of snow, women laboriously carried children, others helped the disabled, some sang… The flow of those who had left their country, their families, their fathers and mothers, moved forward in the hope of finally seeing that long-awaited border… They would face further difficulties and new humiliations… These people were not fleeing because they were murderers; they were Spaniards with principles and values, concerned with politics and social issues. They were fleeing because they refused to accept the system that was about to govern Spain and of which they were already victims. They had no weapons, no food, and they abandoned their families, their homes, and their land for simple political principles they idealized. In France, this influx of refugees blocked at the border caused fear. The press quickly split into two camps: “victims of fascism,” “fighters for freedom,” or on the other hand “remnants of the Red Army,” “murderers of priests.” Some newspapers, and in particular parts of the local press, refused to let pass “a cohort of criminals, rapists of nuns, scum of the earth, torturers, red rabble, foreign filth…” France did not feel the need to absorb this immense, uncertain and chaotic wave, and a deep fear spread among the population. Fear of a “red” overflow became stronger than the desire to help. On the other side, socialist and communist newspapers demanded that this procession of “fighters of the Republic” be welcomed with humanity. On February 5, 1939, an appeal for generosity was launched, supported by many Catholic figures as well as writers and philosophers such as André Gide, Henri Bergson, and François Mauriac. A heated debate followed, and the government was forced to open the borders. On January 31, 1939, the decision was made to open the first internment camp at Argelès-sur-Mer. France, completely unprepared for this influx, gradually organized itself. Many camps were then “built” across the region: Saint-Cyprien, Le Barcarès, Agde, Rivesaltes, Le Vernet, Septfonds, Gurs, Bram, etc. They were mostly guarded by gendarmes, Senegalese soldiers, and Spahis. These improvised camps were nothing more than hastily built wooden barracks with no running water and no hygiene measures. Women, children, and the elderly (around 170,000 people) were separated from able-bodied men and sent to abandoned buildings or temporary shelters. The wounded were hospitalized, but facilities were quickly overwhelmed. Here too, no support system was in place, and the injured sometimes had to walk for days from Argelès to reach the hospital in Perpignan, even though they had already come from Barcelona or Figueres, suffering from various wounds, cutting branches to make stretchers, patching filthy bandages with string. Starving, wounded, exhausted, many died of gangrene. For those who had “ended up” on the beaches of Argelès and Saint-Cyprien (around 275,000 people), an area already considered malarial, the disappointment was immense, and they experienced horror and misery. The beaches, in the middle of February, were beaten by freezing winds. People had to dig holes in the sand to try to find some warmth or burn rifle butts to make fire. All would later say they were treated like cattle—and troublesome cattle at that. Because if a few Spaniards temporarily acted as carpenters, thanks to a timber merchant who provided wood to build the first shelters, very quickly a new necessity arose: posts had to be installed to set up barbed wire and “pen in” this massive population. Thus, the camps of Argelès and Saint-Cyprien offered these refugees of the Republic rows of barbed wire, sand, and mud. Without blankets, bodies numbed by the cold waited in the early morning for the “bread truck.” The bread was thrown randomly to everyone; those who could grab it were lucky, and the others were left with nothing. Then other supplies were distributed, but queues quickly turned into fights as hunger twisted stomachs. And another mystery: the animals brought by the refugees were not all slaughtered for food and also ended up dying. Nevertheless, life slowly organized itself. Some refugees escaped the guards and slipped out at night to steal pieces of metal or car bodies from abandoned vehicles to improve shelters. But very quickly dysentery, scabies, lice, and fleas spread through these improvised camps. Some nearby villages refused to open their cemeteries, and the dead were buried in vineyards near the beaches. Gradually, the departments organized themselves, living conditions in the camps improved, supplies, blankets, and straw were brought in, but the landscape remained the same: barbed wire and watchtowers. To this feeling of confinement was added anxiety due to uncertainty. Many refugees had been separated from their families, either at the border, during group allocations, or back in their homeland. What had become of them? Were they still alive? The uncertainty about their families’ fate was added to the uncertainty of their own fate. What would become of them? Would they remain stateless forever? Would Spain remain Franco’s Spain? Anxiety and despair weighed heavily on morale. They were young, and they held on, as the average age was between 20 and 30. And there were all kinds of people: notables, workers, teachers, peasants, artists, craftsmen, rich, poor, educated or not—they were all there for the same reasons. The Spanish spirit is combative and festive in all circumstances. Thus, even in these camps where basic necessities barely existed and basic human rights were violated, a rich and undoubtedly life-saving social life emerged. Teachers opened writing workshops for illiterate people, poetry workshops, theatre groups, music groups, themed evenings. In the Barcarès camp, a real library was available, students taught history, languages, geography, economics, mathematics, etc. Newspapers appeared, some illustrated with drawings or paintings by artists, and despite controls and confiscations, the external press—mainly communist—managed to enter the camps. In Gurs camp, three orchestras performed in the “culture barracks.” One was conducted by the director of the Madrid Orpheon, made up of twelve musicians who, in their escape, had miraculously saved their instruments. And thus this Hispanic culture, drawn from hope, ideology, and conviction, provided the essential breath needed for survival. A wound: that of being forced to abandon their country. Human stories that are not forgotten, because they are told with the particular emotion of those who suffered. They are based on facts and a very specific period of history, but I especially want to tell the small stories of each person, the pain, the moments of doubt, of hope, and also of joy. I cannot fail to mention the tragedy of the stolen children. Many Republican women had their children taken away under the pretext that “the Reds” were sick and needed to be raised by “upright” parents. A network of illegal adoptions spread across Spain and continued long after Franco’s death. In hospitals, these women were told their child had died, and the family was given a small coffin… empty. Babies were bought at high prices. Today people are finally speaking out; thousands of people have no identity and have lost their origins. A thousand complaints are under investigation, and entire families are waiting to “know.” I chose to speak about the exile of the Spanish people because memory is failing us and the last witnesses are disappearing. We must learn from history, but if this history is no longer told, who will know it? I carried out a small survey among people in their twenties: none of them knew about La Retirada, none knew the role of Spaniards during the Second World War. There is, of course, a duty of memory, but also a need for awareness. In a time when we speak of global crisis, are we really safe from experiencing such an exodus? Would we be better prepared than in 1939 to welcome 500,000 refugees? Could we extend a hand to them? Would we be ready to share? These are questions we must one day ask ourselves. And why were they forgotten? No history book mentions the role of “La Nueve” or the presence of Spaniards in the Resistance, nor the many roundups of which they were victims. This is what drives me to speak about La Retirada, about exile, so that this distortion of memory does not lead to oblivion. Today Spain is opening its wounds, mass graves are being uncovered, voices are being heard again. It took 36 years after Franco’s death.
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