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Ghosts of Spain: Landscapes, Memory & the Spanish Civil War
119 Plays8 days ago
Episode twenty-five of the new series of Pieces of History turns its gaze to Spain - a country where landscapes, ruins, and silences still carry the weight of a conflict that ended nearly a century ago. The Spanish Civil War continues to shape identity, politics, and memory, yet much of its legacy remains contested, hidden, or unspoken.
Joining me is writer and historian Nick Lloyd, whose long connection with Spain and deep engagement with the war’s legacy come together in his powerful book Travels Through the Spanish Civil War. Rather than offering a traditional historical account, Nick travels through the places where the war was fought and remembered - from the shattered streets of Belchite to the refugee trails across the Pyrenees - uncovering the stories embedded in Spain’s terrain.
Together, we explore the origins of the Civil War, the forces that shaped each side, and the human experiences that still echo in towns, archives, and family histories. Nick shares encounters with historians, journalists, and descendants of survivors; reflects on the emotional impact of tracing escape routes into France; and shines a light on figures like Francesc Boix, whose photographs became vital testimony at Nuremberg.
In this episode, we delve into how Spain remembers - and forgets - its civil war, examining the landscapes, memories, and moral questions that continue to define its modern identity.
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Travels Through the Spanish Civil War - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Travels-Through-Spanish-Civil-War-ebook/dp/B0DZQ7DSS3
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Transcript
Introduction and Focus on Spanish Civil War
00:00:13
Speaker
Hello and welcome to you Pieces of History. I'm Colin McGrath and in each episode explore both the renowned and the lesser known events that have shaped our world. Today our journey takes us to Spain, a country where landscapes, ruins and memories still bear the imprint of a conflict that ended almost a century ago.
00:00:33
Speaker
The Spanish Civil War remains one of Europe's most divisive chapters, its legacy echoing through towns, mountains and family stories to this day.
Nick Lloyd's Exploration and Connection to Spain
00:00:42
Speaker
Joining me is Nick Lloyd, a writer and historian whose long connection with Spain has shaped his powerful exploration of the war's enduring presence.
00:00:51
Speaker
His book, Travels Through the Spanish Civil War, traces the conflict not only through archives but by travelling the places where history unfolded, from the ruins of Belsite to the escape routes across the Pyrenees.
00:01:04
Speaker
In this episode, we delve into the origins of the conflict, the people shaped by it, and how modern Spain continues to remember, and sometimes forget, this turbulent past. I hope you enjoy. it So Nick, thanks very much for joining me.
00:01:19
Speaker
Could you tell listeners a bit about your own background, your work, your long-standing connection with Spain, and how you first became interested in the history of the Civil War? Yeah, thanks, Conor. Thanks for having me on.
00:01:31
Speaker
I'm looking forward to it. So I've lived here since 1988. I've lived in Barcelona since 1988. No, well, apologies. I've lived in Barcelona since 1992. I've lived in Spain since 1988. I've been doing tours on the Spanish Civil War for, think it's about, I've lost track, actually. It's about 15 years now.
00:01:48
Speaker
It all started, which I think is a question you want to ask me about later, when 20-odd years ago, they put up a plaque 30 metres from where I'm sitting now, So a young Catalan who was 16 years old at the start of the war called Frances Bosch.
00:02:04
Speaker
And they put a plaque up to him and they named our library just around the corner here after him. And I just became fascinated with his figure on what he did. And really, it was thanks to Francesc that I ended up doing this as a day job, which is a love doing. And his story is one of the stories that I ah kind of try and thread through the book, I suppose.
Overview and Impact of the Spanish Civil War
00:02:23
Speaker
For listeners who may not be familiar with the Spanish Civil War, I'm definitely including myself in in that because whenever I studied history in school and in university, um Spanish Civil War wasn't a topic that was covered at all. You had to go out and seek out the information yourself, which I've done you many times.
00:02:40
Speaker
So could you give us a brief overview when it happened, why it erupted and who the main forces were on each side? ah Brief. I'll give it a go at brief. Well, mean, the cause of the Spanish Civil War is the July military coup or fascist or right wing coup against the centre left government.
00:02:59
Speaker
That is the cause of the Spanish Civil War. But of course, there's a lot without the coup. There's no there's no war. But of course, there's a lot of background to this. I mean, it's this you have to think in the 30s, everything else going on in the rest of Europe, the rise of fascism, wing authoritarianism.
00:03:15
Speaker
Great Depression, of course, is having its effect. That's just sort of the international context. But, of course, the Spanish context is key. Thirties in Spain, huge differences between en rich and poor, right-winging refusing reforms, supported, with a few exceptions, by an ultra-reactionary Catholic church.
00:03:31
Speaker
and and And I think that all of those are there, but the most important element is the attitude of the Spanish military and the refusal, or I should say 60% Spanish military, because they don't all support the coup.
00:03:43
Speaker
40% remain loyal to their oath, approximately. But the as I say, it's a Spanish ministry, and the refusal to accept, um let's say, any form of political process.
00:03:54
Speaker
And they've been brutalized by the that series of colonial wars in the nineteen up until the mid-1920s in Morocco. fact, most of the officers involved in the coup, including Franco himself, they call themselves Africanistas. They'll cut their teeth down there.
00:04:12
Speaker
um And then, of course, you've got other things going on, like the tensions between the centralism of ah Madrid, the Polo, the Basque and Catalonia. And there's also a real cultural war going on. For example, the rights for a new role for women, etc.
00:04:25
Speaker
That resonates today. there's all these different tensions, but above all, it's class tensions and the attitude of the military refusing the reforms of the military, refusing the reforms and their supporters, of course, refusing the reforms.
00:04:40
Speaker
moderate reforms of the centre-left government, which wins the election in February 36. It's not a socialist government, it's a centre-left government.
Travel Literature and Historical Memory
00:04:49
Speaker
Your first book is called Forgotten Places, Barcelona and the Spanish Civil War.
00:04:53
Speaker
Your new one, which is out on the 20th of November, is called Travels Around the Spanish Civil War. What made you the to go down the route of history through travel? So you physically moved through battlefields, towns, border routes and some of the landscapes.
00:05:07
Speaker
um It began partly because not necessary to write a book, but also because I've, well, it was probably started about eight, 10 years ago when I felt I knew ah reason about the war in Barcelona, but I just didn't know squat about what happened outside.
00:05:25
Speaker
So I just started going on a series of little road trips and with historian friends. And and then the sort of, you know, gradually the idea of a book of those threading nose those trips together came out, really.
00:05:40
Speaker
um So it wasn't initially the idea. Also, I mean, I really like the genre of travel literature. i mean, it's such a wide thing. I mean, I think you could argue George Orwell's Homestead Catalunya is a form of travel literature.
00:05:52
Speaker
a Travel literature, of course, can be very superficial, but it can be, you know, a lot more profound depending on, you know, the the book. ah I do think that, you know, by when you go to places, you can really get a feel of, you don't get just by reading it or reading about it.
00:06:11
Speaker
Or maybe just the story can just goes into you in a more profound way by but being there. For example, Orwell's writing in Aragon is just so evocative. It's just so powerful of trying to,
00:06:27
Speaker
recreate that time and place. And, you know, I can't emulate that. of course I can't. But ah there was something in inspiration there in Homestead to Catalunya, actually, the way that Orwell writes to try and follow in that type of narrative, I suppose.
00:06:43
Speaker
But I'm always, i have as I say, i've always been ah attracted to the genre of travel literature, full stop. Also, I'm a guide. That's what I do. That's my day job, my bread and butter.
00:06:56
Speaker
I guess I felt I feel a bit frustrated sometimes because I really enjoy what I do and I think and most people who come on my tour would agree with that. I really do enjoy it. But I'd also love to be able to take people out to these places in Aragon, which is 300 kilometres from Barcelona, to the Exile Route to the north, which is about 200 kilometres the French frontier, or 200 kilometres to the south to the Battle of the Ebro.
00:07:22
Speaker
And I'd love to do that, but it's really complicated. You know, you've got to get a minibus and you've got organize restaurants and hotels. And also I've got young children and I just can't do it basically logistically or per or from a family point of view. I can't do that.
00:07:39
Speaker
But I've got all these stories in me which I've read about and I'd like to tell. I really enjoy telling stories. um So I think the book is partly about that. It's about a personal frustration in getting rid of these, getting these stories, not getting rid of them, sorry, getting these stories out.
00:07:54
Speaker
Yeah. And I've thread that into this travelogue. One of the most powerful locations in the book is Belsite. So it was pretty much a turn left in ruins as a form of remembrance.
00:08:06
Speaker
So walking those streets itself, what did the landscape communicate that you couldn't find in other archives or or books? I mean, it is such a terrible place. It really is. I mean, nobody could not, there's nobody who couldn't be moved by going to Belsite. And all the signs of war that we you know see from up to Gaza today, that they're all there.
00:08:29
Speaker
It's just a horrific and horrible, and but also a vocative place of what war is. It is, i may may be wrong, but as far as I know, it is the largest place of remains from a war, of a town from a war anywhere in Europe.
00:08:51
Speaker
I'm not sure about Ukraine today. We'll have to see what that one pans out. out I mean, there are other small remains from, you know, from Stalingrad or from whatever that's called now, or yeah Coventry Cathedral or there's a small village in France, ohde which which you know which was left purposely as remains.
00:09:11
Speaker
But the whole town, I don't think there was any. but I'm not sure about in the whole world, but certainly in Europe, there aren't any others. And it was left like that by Franco on purpose as a memorial, apparently, to red barbarity.
00:09:27
Speaker
But in reality, most of the destruction that you see when you go there is, well, it's the quickly as a background. It's a Republican offensive against it it' into Aragon, which fails.
00:09:42
Speaker
And as a secondary prize, they take this small town of Berchite. it's one oh It's damaged during that attack. It's then severely damaged when the republican Republicans, when the town force the Francoist forces, it's the Condoleezion, the Nazi Condoleezion bombing the town.
00:10:00
Speaker
And then Franco takes it. And then he leaves it as this memorial to to apparently, as I say, to red barbarity, and then recreate new town right next to it.
00:10:12
Speaker
That's unique. I mean, there were plans to do that after the First and Second World War, but nobody did it. in In this case, it was done. and then But then, actually, when you're walking in around, you you go on the tours there and you read about it, it actually turns out that most of the destruction you see is not actually from war.
00:10:29
Speaker
It's what happens to a town when it's left for 80 years 90 years, yeah? or ninety years yeah especially with that type of construction, not you know, adobe, old construction, and most of it's by through abandonment.
00:10:42
Speaker
But it is such a sad place, yeah. And it contrasts quite vividly. So the the old town is there as a ruin, and, you know, Franco's failed in that attempt to turn it into a memorial of red barbarity. I don't think anyone going around there today, but it's just a memorial to war, basically, and what war does.
00:11:03
Speaker
But there's a real vivid contrast between the old town and the new town which was built by Franco right next to it and which is a basically it's a fascist architecture and it's quite not an unpleasant place ah to walk around but it's just quite a stark contrast between the two places and also it's just you know just imagine that you know the people who are from there the families are from there living in next to the ghost of what was was their old town, which is quite a strange thing in itself, isn't it?
Spain's Historical Memory and Political Implications
00:11:35
Speaker
What the Spanish parliament these days? Have they considered doing anything with the place? Are they happy to leave it as is or even turn it like into like a local museum maybe? um Well, I think it kind of does function in that way now.
00:11:47
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, the natural thing, I think, is to is to rebuild what happened in Belchiti was a strange thing to do. It is an example, I think, that Francoism was many things, ah but some historians have described it as, i'm like all the forms of fascism, a massive cult of the dead.
00:12:07
Speaker
So it was ah it was it was one of the examples across Spain ah this landscape of of remembering those who fought on their side and and and venerating them as martyrs.
00:12:21
Speaker
And so Belchita would be in this martyr town, which would be left like this ah in veneration of those who died. i think there were plans to do that after the First World War in France, but it never happened.
00:12:35
Speaker
um And I think the normal thing is to rebuild. The strange thing is perhaps what happened at Belchita. Of course, we'll see if that actually happens in Gaza or Ukraine now.
00:12:47
Speaker
Of course, like in in Barcelona, What know of Madrid, I mean, that hasn't happened. in There are very few remains from the war in Barcelona. ah You've got, to you know, there are bullet marks here. There's, you know, there's shrapnel. the I mean, the most dramatic remains, of course, is, I don't you saw it, is in the San Felipe Neri church, and which says which is pitted with shrapnel from a bomb dropped by an Italian fascist death plane.
00:13:14
Speaker
and where 42 people were, 40 people, 30 whom were children were were killed in January 1938. And that's, that has, is still there. But partly it was there because the for many years, the Francoist regime claimed it was where anarchists shot priests.
00:13:31
Speaker
Now, of course, anarchists did shoot priests, and but they didn't do it next to the Catalan government. and They did it up in the hills. That, that stay, that wasn't tapered up, concreted over or covered.
00:13:45
Speaker
because they use it's a lie. They use it as this lie, but but this lie, afraid, has become a very common modern myth, urban myth, know, in Barcelona. Although perhaps recently, because a lot is on the news regularly now and on the in the in the in the press, it does get talked about. So perhaps fewer and fewer people think that that's where anarchists shot priests, and now they realise it was the real culprit.
00:14:06
Speaker
And also, if you see that wall, it's not the result. a Bullets don't do that. It's the result of shrapnel. It's too far too weak for bullets. And Nick, Spain's long struggle over how to remember the Franco era and what many call the country's ongoing memory war, it seems to have flared up again in recent years.
00:14:26
Speaker
And what you just touched on there, from the debates over historical memory laws to the rise of Vox, how do you see that battle over the past shaping Spain's politics today? In the case of Vox, the far right party.
00:14:39
Speaker
So there's there's a real memory war taking place in Spain now. about how how how the war is is seen. And is quite a na it's a nasty memory war and it's getting worse and worse. I mean, every year it takes us to somewhere where you wouldn't have thought the year before.
00:14:57
Speaker
And and i mean, for example, one of the things, you know, when you write a book, you always think, oh, fuck wish I ah wish I'd included that. wish I'd included that. One of the things I feel I haven't included because it's kind of come up on me very come um very quickly because I have talked a little bit about this the rise of this far-right party Vox and how it's it seized Franco in the Spanish Civil War.
00:15:18
Speaker
and But and for for quite some time in Vox's short existence, but almost all their voters are from older men, and obviously probably from a certain social class as well.
00:15:30
Speaker
But that's kind of really changed in recent last year. And all the opinion, they're shooting up and all the opinion polls saying they're getting loads of votes from younger working class men. The sort of people, you know, back in the day, they voted, you know, for the left.
00:15:46
Speaker
and Or not even, not back in the not long ago. The sort of people, it's kind of, but that's what's happening in Le Pen in France where all those old communist folks have gone to the far right.
00:15:59
Speaker
but you know, that's that's happening here too. And I don't think I reflected that because Although I have reflected the rise of Vox, I haven't reflected the fact that young people, or young men particularly, not women so much, are being really attracted to that party.
00:16:14
Speaker
um And that's ah you know that that's a failure, or the so success of the Franco regime in repressing the memory, and then when democracy arrived, not talking about it for so many years, until the last 20 years.
00:16:27
Speaker
The last 20 years has completely changed the panorama in Spain. You know, people do talk about the war now. but not everyone does. And a lot of people talk about it in a different way. And I'd also say, you know, I'm in, I'm in Catalonia, sitting in my flight in Barcelona. And I sometimes feel I'm in a bit of a bubble.
00:16:46
Speaker
What's it like in Sevilla? What's it like in Madrid? I don't think I burst that bubble enough. I did. i did. You know, I did. You know, talked to, talked to people from the, from ah the other side of things, but I think the the memory of Spanish War is becoming more and more,
00:17:03
Speaker
divisive and sitting here in Gatineau, perhaps we don't realise how divisive it's becoming.
Legacy of Spanish Civil War Refugees
00:17:10
Speaker
Nick, you've mentioned the escape routes used by refugees who fled across the Pyrenees in France, um many of whom ended up in camps. What was it like to trace their journeys and what did they reveal about the conflicts, wider European impact?
00:17:25
Speaker
Those routes, routes which I've done on a number of occasions, I'd love to take people there one day, I always find them very moving. There's several different routes you can take.
00:17:36
Speaker
i mean, it's it's as fra as basically as Franco's forces invade Catalonia in December 38, slowly Barcelona falls in January 39, and there's a mass exodus to the French frontier of people ah from Catalonia, but also a lot from the rest of Republican Spain, and we're already refugees in Barcelona.
00:18:01
Speaker
and But look, I mean, give an idea, by the end of the war, by the autumn of 38 in Barcelona, you I'm not exaggerating, in a city of 1.2 million, there are 400,000 refugees.
00:18:12
Speaker
yeah And there was always malnutrition, yeah. And the situation is getting worse and worse. There's 700,000 refugees in total in Catalunya, which then had 2.2 million. And 450,000 of these people, men, women and children, flee across the border.
00:18:30
Speaker
They're being bombed and strapped all the way. i mean, an untold number die on the way. They reach the border. France doesn't want to open the border, but he's kind of got no choice because there's just so many people. And they open the border, out and in 10 days, it's 450,000. End of January 1939. Well, I'm afraid the French state treats them like animals. It herds them into camps, particularly on the beaches near Pépinian.
00:18:54
Speaker
There is no accurate figure, but several thousand died in those camps of sometimes of abuse, but above all, it's malnutrition and disease, and cholera, et cetera, and untreated wall wounds.
00:19:09
Speaker
And it's just to stand on the beach archelares, which is, you know, if you go in the summer, I've been there with my son, you know, with his spade, bucket and spade, and, you know, it's it's a typical Mediterranean beach, and you might spend might want to spend a few days there if you like, that sort of thing.
00:19:25
Speaker
But also, it's kind of, it's a real... cognitive distance. Now you're in this place, which is a nice, friendly family place, but the same, very same place, there were people in turn there under atrocious conditions dying on this beach.
00:19:42
Speaker
And of course it's out of the frying pan and into the fire because they're kept there. um i mean, one of, I didn't actually include it because I ran out of time, but there's another camp just next to Perpignan, which is inland.
00:19:57
Speaker
At a place called, one in Catalan, it's pronounced River Salters. River Salters. River Salts, I think, in French. It was an internment camp, or as the French called it in 1939, a concentration camp, particularly for Spanish Republicans.
00:20:11
Speaker
It then becomes a camp later for ah foreign Jewish refuge refugees across France. From there, they're all deported to Darcy and onto Auschwitz.
00:20:23
Speaker
Later on, it's an internment camp for... after the ah the Algerian war, et cetera. And then actually next to it, there is still ah um a refugee centre, which is another term for an internment camp. but so So even though this place has been memorialised, next door there is a modern internment camp.
00:20:41
Speaker
So it has all the those layers. so They're in these, under these atrocious conditions. And then it looks like Germany's going to invade. So 80,000 are conscripted into labour battalions under under better conditions, I have to say.
00:20:54
Speaker
ah and in in part to try to complete the Maginot Line in the north of France and when when Germany does invade, around 10,000 of those Spanish Republicans end up being captured and deported east to SS camps.
00:21:06
Speaker
I'm also discussing the book with the story of Frances Bosch. 80,000 others approximately are used as slave or forced labourers particular in Nazi-controlled France, building the Atlantic Wall, you know, those bunkers.
00:21:21
Speaker
I can't prove this, but you know, all those bunkers at Normandy Beach and You know, all that line met so many of them were built by Spanish Republicans. And also at Bordeaux, the submarine base, where a heck of a lot died.
00:21:36
Speaker
Again, there is as far as I know, there is no accurate figure of how many died. Those who aren't captured formed the backbone of the resistance in many parts of France, along with all of those international brigades. There was a thousand, particularly from France, because there were thousands and thousands of them.
00:21:53
Speaker
but also from Central and Eastern Europe who can't get back home. And, you know, amongst the first acts of resistance of Spanish Republicans derailing a train, deing derailing trains, you know, Spanish Republican women, you know, with baskets, smuggling guns from one side to the other side, smuggling papers.
00:22:10
Speaker
have you And these men and women, you know, they they were not afraid, you know, or they were afraid, but but they but they dealt with it. and And everyone else perhaps in in France was in a state of shock, understandably.
00:22:22
Speaker
um the first SS officers to be assassinated by former French brigaders. also in Paris, the the French resistance was commanded by it a French brigader. And that's similarly across Europe, you know, in in in Amsterdam, where the resistance the resistance but money by jewish and Dutch brigader in Oslo, in Copenhagen, all four of Titus generals in the partisan war were Yugoslavian veterans from Spain. we We can't understand the old resistance, the resistance movements in Western Europe, in many parts of Western Europe, without understanding some of their previous role in Spain.
00:22:59
Speaker
And, you know, you know so it's often said that, you know, the Spanish Civil War is, and it's true, is a training ground for the the Nazis, like the Condor Legion, you know, their planes over Madrid and Barcelona and then over Warsaw and Belfast.
00:23:13
Speaker
But it's also ah training ground for la resistance. That's another interesting aspect of the war. And of course, they're also involved in a very symbolic way.
00:23:24
Speaker
The first allied unit to enter and team up with the French resistance in Paris was La Nueve, which was a small contingent of a French army contingent, which was made up as they were called La Nueve, not La Nueve, the ninth, because they were made up of Spanish Republicans with a French commander. And they went into Paris with their tanks named Guadalajara or half tracks rather.
00:23:53
Speaker
then Guadalajara, Don Quixote, Guernica, Madrid, and they team up and help to liberate Paris, which is symbolic anyway, if anything.
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:24:05
Speaker
That was Nick Lloyd, author of Travels Through the Spanish Civil War. A huge thank you to Nick for sharing and his insights, his travels, and his reflections on a conflict whose shadows still stretch across Spain today.
00:24:18
Speaker
If you'd like to delve deeper into the stories, places and people we discussed, you can find travels through the Spanish Civil War online or at your favourite bookshop, through Amazon, independent retailers or directly from a publisher.
00:24:32
Speaker
Be sure to subscribe and rate Pieces of History on iTunes and Spotify and if you'd like to get in touch, you can reach me up pieces of history pod at at outlook.com or follow along on Instagram and Facebook at Pieces of History. history Thanks for listening.