The road of death
On February 6, 1937 the troops of General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano entered Malaga. About 100,000 Republicans fled to Almería by the coastal route. It was called 'disbands'. "It's the m & aac
ALEJANDRO Torrus
"Imagine 150,000 men, women and children fleeing for shelter, fearful of the nationalist army of General Queipo de Llano. There is only one way. There is no escape. The city is seeking Almería, and you have to walk there about 200 kilometers (...) they have to walk women, elderly and children ... staggering, stumbling, opening your feet on the dusty flints, while fascists mercilessly bombed from aircraft and from cannonaded sea".
The testimony is from the log book of Norman Bethune, a renowned Canadian lung surgeon who attended the Spanish Civil War as a volunteer Red Aid. His written testimony and photos of his assistant, Hazen Size, is how little remains of one of the most tragic episodes, and unknown, of the Civil War: the call disbanded.
On February 6, 1937 the troops of General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano arrived at Malaga. Most villages in the western part of the province was in the hands of Franco, and the only way out was for Republican militia, women, children and the elderly was the coastal path, a path that today remembered as "the highway of death" (the current N-340).
To the north of Malaga Italian troops arrived; to the west, the army of Queipo de Llano; and sea vessels of the pro-Franco side. "By land, sea and air, Franco's troops, supported by Italy and Germany, attacked thousands of innocent civilians," said historian at the University of Málaga, Encarna Barranquero, author of Population and Civil War in Málaga: Fall, exodus and shelter.
Between 100,000 and 150,000 people left Málaga to Almería by the coastal route. Know precisely how many people died is impossible, although some sources speak of between 5,000 and 7,500 people. Many bodies ended up in mass graves or took the Guadalfeo river. "Only in the mass grave in the cemetery of San Rafael de Málaga already identified more than 4,300 victims," says Andrés Fernández, an archaeologist and scientist in charge of investigations in the cemetery of San Rafael.
"Children wearing only his pants and girls dress her wide, half-naked in the sun all ... Children with little arms and legs entangled in bloody rags: children without shoes, with swollen feet; children crying desperate pain , hungry, tired ... four days persecuted by airplanes of the fascist barbarians, and four nights of walking in a compact group men, women, children, mules, donkeys and goats, trying to keep families together, calling for own behalf, seeking in the shadows, "continues the story of Bethune.
One of those girls walking with his family is Natalia Montasaroa. Was 13 that on February 7, 1937. Today, 76 years later, remembered for Public, shakily, which lived during those days.
"We left Malaga 7th at ten p.m. We were scared because we heard Queipo de Llano on the radio, saying... 'Malagueños, queers, pants Put him to the moon' The road was crowded No will I never forget a woman with a small child in her arms they had been shot from the boat a projectile, and the stones jumped gave the woman's face: she was dead with the child in her arms, who was not hurt. .. "recalls Natalia, who in 1937 was only 13 years.
Natalia's family, however, never came to Malaga. The Italian army reached before. "The fourth night cruise remember we saw a lot behind our lights. I asked my father what it was and he said he would be the lighting in any town. It was not true. It was about Italian tanks. People hid in Mount. Since the tanks were firing machine guns at everything that moved. the next day we returned to the road, a woman hidden in the ditch had been crushed by tanks. he had no sense to go ahead, national had cut the road Motril "he says.
However, the worst part of the road had not yet come for the family of Natalia. Although no longer they were in danger of being attacked by the Italian army, the way back home he left marked on his retina "the worst thing a person can see."
"On the road we saw many dead. Hanged militants, an entire family (the militia father, mother and three children) shot in the head, many chose suicide and kill his family before falling into the hands of national When arrived to Malaga many people locked in a boat in the harbor, and many others were shot ", says Natalia.
Salvador Guzman, 85, did manage to get to Almería with his family. His father, Jose Guzman, was the first deputy mayor of the municipality of Coín (Málaga), ruled by a coalition of PCE and PSOE. His flight started early Feb. 7. In a car, "similar to the Renault 4-L 60", the family of the mayor of the city and his undertook a long way to destinations in Almería. In total, ten people in a 1937 car.
"The first thing that stays in my retina happened just outside Malaga. At an intersection, I saw a man shot him in the temple with his two daughters after his wife and, finally, himself. It was the first dead I saw in my life, but unfortunately were not the last, "recalls for Public Salvador, which ensures that throughout their journey their vehicle came under fire from ships of the pro-Franco side Cervera and Canarias .
"The first missiles were thrown at our car because they would think we were soldiers. That was the closest thing to hell I've ever seen. We got refuge in a section of the road. Then we saw some countrymen Coin also fled. We told that should not happen, but ignored us. we saw his car burst into hundreds of pieces, "said Salvador.
Four days later, the family of Salvador made it to Almería. On the way they were hundreds of victims. "We watched as they opened the floodgates of a dam leaving many people ahead amid cries of despair of his family," he recalls. On arrival at the capital Almeria, however, did not end the danger.
Italian aircraft was waiting for the fugitives. "The Italian planes came every night. They bombarded the city center where there were thousands of refugees," says Salvador, who was sheltered in the house of some friends of the family. The nights of bombing the capital of Almería would be the last that the family of Salvador spend together. After the war his father was arrested, publicly humiliated and imprisoned. In 1947, he was shot.
The bombing of Almería was picked up by the Canadian doctor, who arrived in the city after four days moving patients from Malaga to Almeria city. "When those 50,000 people had arrived at the site bloodless they believed a safe shelter, fascists, German and Italian planes unleashed on the population a large bombing ... they threw ten bombs in the same city center, on the main street Almería, where piled on the floor, slept exhausted refugees. the street looked like a slaughter, with the dead and the dying, lit by the flames of burning buildings, "writes Norman Bethune in his notebook.
The hardness of the image and the cruelty of fate of Republicans who fled Málaga took aa Bethune, survivors and historians contacted by this newspaper to think that the operation of the armies of Franco side was an organized plan of extermination . "What crime had been committed these men of the city to be killed in such a bloody way?" Asks Bethune at the conclusion of his writings. "Their only crime had been to vote for a government of the people, moderate buffer against the crushing burden of centuries of capitalist greed," he concludes.
