The San Isidro camp and the hidden mass grave

A half hour train journey south out Alicante brings you to Albatera and the site of the San Isidro concentration camp. This is the camp where most of those who survived the horror of the surrender at the port and the Los Almendros camp were shipped by the Franco forces. Today, it sits within the shadow the the High Speed rail route which is being built down to the south of the country and to get the site of the camp I had to pick my way through the building site. A monument was erected at San Isidro by survivors in 1995 and its twin iron beams, wrapped at the top with broken chains, still stand proud although overshadowed by the building work and surrounded by rubbish. All that remains of the original camp is a small brick shed that was close to the gatehouse and which is now used as tool store. It is estimated that 25,000 people died at the camp. During the night, Falangists would arrive from all over the country to drag away and torture and shoot prisoners. In 2011 the Spanish Ministry of Justice, after years of pressure, finally produced a map of known sites of mass graves from the Civil War period. But, despite the fact that thousands were murdered at San Isidro , with many buried adjacent to Albatera railway station, this location was left off the official map even though it is thought to be the one of the largest mass graves in the country. Why? That is what the Commission for Historical Memory are demanding to know and their campaign to expose the truth is one that deserves international support. I hope to be working on a film with both Spanish and British comrades to drag this cover up out into the daylight and will be posting again on this subject.

Campo de Los Almendros - Alicante

Campo de Los Almendros (Field of Almond Trees) was the makeshift concentration camp just north of the main City of Alicante where the thousands of Republicans rounded up on the dockside were taken by Franco's forces when Alicante became the final stronghold of the Spanish Republic to fall to the Nationalists on the 31st March 1939. Today it remains a desolate place hemmed in by a wire fence and located just behind a shopping centre.There is little to mark its significance. A plaque laid down by the anarchists, a symbolic olive tree regularly subject to neo fascist vandalism and a couple of small signs that say nothing of what terror took place in this small corner of the Costa Blanca. The field measures just 200 x 80 metres and yet estimates suggest that up to 30,000 prisoners passed through in its short time of operation. There was no food and no water and other estimates suggest that up to 2000 may have died, some machine gunned by Itialian troops on the slopes of the nearby hill. Where those victims of the fascists are buried is not clear but there must be many bodies beneath the barren landscape today. The camp was dismantled on the 6th April with the prisoners dispersed, mainly to the labour camp at San Isidro/Albatera. I will post from there shortly and will also look in more detail in a future post at the horrific terror of the surrender on the dockside at Alicante.

The International Brigade Memorial at Benissa

On a cold January morning I jumped the tram at Alicante and headed north along the coast in search of the only memorial to the International Brigades that I know of on the Costa Blanca. After a change at Benidorm, a couple of hours of travelling with some fantastic views from the northern end of the bay of Alicante I pulled into Benissa and began the two km walk into the centre on town. The IB memorial is at the Northern end of the main drag through the town and as well as the superb bronze monument above there is also a beautifully kept square and gardens. I was intrigued as to why there was a an IB memorial so far behind the lines from where the Brigades saw action. Turns out the old TB hospital in the town was used as a miltary hospital with the Franciscan Friory close by used for convalescence. As a result, ten IB'ers from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade are buried in the cemetary some distance out on the edge of town. Although the day was bright, it was cold and I needed some tortilla, tinto and a drop of brandy to warm me up. With a march back to the station ahead of me I didn't have time to get out to the cemetery on this visit. That's a decent excuse to come back another time though.

Manolo Macia Stadium - Santa Pola

Just around the bay of Alicante, the town of Santa Pola football stadium is named after Manuel Maciá Sempere; born in the town and starting his career for his home town club before moving up the coast to play for Hércules CF of Alicante. Macia is a hero, not only as an exceptional footballer but as a Republican fighter in the Civil War as well. I am indebted to the groundhopper Ganninaway website for some of the following information. Better known as Manolo Maciá, or Maciá II during his playing career at Hercules due to his elder brother already playing at the club and becoming known as Maciá I, he was a strong defender, sublime in the tackle, who spent almost all of his playing career in the area of his birth, first playing for Atlétic Club Santa Pola from 1925 before moving across town to Santa Pola FC and then to Hércules CF in 1930. The Spanish Civil War halted football in Spain and Manolo Maciá fought on the side of the Republicans before he went into exile in Nice and signed for OGC Nice, where he would spend four years playing for them alongside José Samitier and Ricardo Zamora. This would be the only period that he spent playing outside of the Alicante area, where he returned in 1940, after temporarily being imprisoned, having turned down offers from both Barcelona and Real Madrid during his career. Once back in Alicante, prison would await the player after a false claim was levelled against him that he had burned down a Santa Pola church, an accusation that saw him jailed for six months, before he resumed his career with Hércules, interrupted thereafter only by a one season spell with Alicante CF. Manolo Maciá would later coach Hércules before taking the reigns in Santa Pola. I can recommend catching a game at the Macia - cold beer and grilled sardines at half time and a dedicated bunch of ultras banging the drums while swigging from super size bottles of Mahou - excellent stuff.

The El Faro republican barracks

Just down the narrow road back towards the main drag from the gun emplacements at El Faro you can find whats left of the Republican barracks where the crew from the gun batteries would have been stationed. When I first located both the barracks and the defences they were in a shocking state and crumbling into the ground. In the past few years the local authority has funded some stabilising and re-building as Spain becomes more open about its haunted past and more inclined to preserve some of the history. Can't keep the graffiti artists away though. In the pine groves a few hundred metres away from the barracks I have found some derelict and much more basic gun emplacements that are steadily being reclaimed by the natural environment more than 75 years on.

introduction

This blog has been set up to trace some of the key sites around Alicante and the Costa Blanca from the Spanish Civil War and to try and uncover some of the hidden history. With hundreds of thousands of Brits starting their holidays as their plane lands at Alicante Airport you can bet that only a handful know the brutal, and fairly recent, past of the area. Alicante was the final city to fall to the Nationalists with huge loss of life and the repression and brutalisation of those sympathetic to the Republican cause. On this blog I will document my research into the subject and post photographs. My own journey into this area of research started when I stumbled upon some gun emplacements while walking the hills around El Faro that overlook the town of Santa Pola. They are pictured at the top of this post. From a Spanish guy in a bar close by I found out that there were where the Republican forces attempted to shoot down the planes from Hitlers Condor Legion and Mussolini's air force as they mounted their relentless bombing campaign of Alicante. That was enough to encourage me to dig deeper into the buried history of the area.