At long last - a memorial on Alicante dock side

So, at long last Alicante has its memorial to the Republicans captured at the end of the Civil War on the City's dockside. It has taken decades of struggle, and a seismic shift in the political make up at the City Hall, to enable this to happen some 77 years after the event. It is a sharp and fitting tribute and it's not tucked away in a corner, it is right there on the main portside walk although the backdrop of luxury yachts is a bit incongruous. I was chuffed to see that the International Brigades Memorial Trust had been over for a visit and that Alicante has twinned with Cardiff in memory of the heroic Archibald Dixon, captain of the Stanbrook, who took huge risks to rescue as many refugees as he could. For the rest, it was concentration camps, death and torture. They will now never be forgotten.

An unusual memorial in the heart of Alicante

I had read on line that there was an earlier Civil War memorial in the heart of Alicante that I had walked past numerous times without actually clocking what it was. On the broad boulevard that sweeps down from Lucheros to the sea front it stands at the end of a pedestrianised section butting up against the road. The inscription - which you have to back into a bush to read - honors the memory of all victims of war who fought for what they believe in. The dates are odd - even with the final digit at the end of 194* kicked away. The cross at the top suggests a religious input - I would welcome any further information

Back up to Los Almendros Camp

With the unveiling of the new memorial on the port side at Alicante I decided to take the walk up to Los Almendros along the route that the thousands of Republican prisoners would have been marched by their Italian captors. It takes around half an hour. I had not been up for a while and was pleased to see that that the memorial stands strong and proud although you can see the lumps knocked out of it by the regular fascist attacks. It remains an extraordinary and barren site and you can easily make out the lines of the hills that loom over it today from the few contemporary pictures. Thousands died in the week or so it was open before the prisoners were marched south to San Isidro.Like San Isidro, Los Almendros has never been excavated, that makes little sense as many must have been buried here in mass graves where they fell - some mown down by Italian fascist machine guns. As the tide turns on historical memory Los Almendros is a reminder that there is still a long distance to go.