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.