THE CRIME ON THE ROAD “LA DESBANDÁ”

 THE CRIME ON THE ROAD “LA DESBANDÁ”

The largest movement of refugees before the conquest of Catalonia in 1939 came early in 1937. The Nationalist attack on Málaga, which began on 3 February, produced the mass exodus of civilians known as the Desbandá. Having heard news of Francoist repression as well as listening to months of General Queipo de Llano’s radio broadcasts, at least 150,000 people, mostly women and children, fled along the coastal road to Almería, approximately 200 kilometres away. As they fled, they were attacked by Francoist tanks, artillery, and Francoist, Italian, and German planes, and bombarded by Francoist naval vessels. The attacks lasted for five days and continued even as the refugees entered Almería itself. At least 5,000 were killed.

The only visual evidence of this war crime are the photographs taken by Hazen Sise, a member of Dr. Norman Bethune’s Canadian Blood Transfusion Service. Sise and Bethune were en route to Málaga when they heard of the exodus and during three days used their ambulance to transport refugees to Almería. Bethune included  his colleague’s photos in the booklet The crime on the road Malaga-Almeria he published shortly afterwards.

“The evacuation in mass of the civilian population of Malaga started on Sunday Feb. 7. Twentyfive thousand German, Italian and Moorish troops entered the town on Monday morning the eighth. Tanks, submarines, warships, airplanes combined to smash the defenses of the city held by a small heroic band of Spanish troops without tanks, airplanes or support. The so-called Nationalists entered, as they had entered every captured village and city in Spain, which was practically a deserted town.

Now imagine one hundred and fifty thousand men women and children setting out for safety to the town situated over a hundred miles away. There is only one road they can take. There is no other way of escape. This road, bordered on one side by the high Sierra Nevada mountains and on the other by the sea, is cut into the side of the cliffs and climbs up and down from sea-level to over 500 feet. The city they must reach is Almeria, and it is over two hundred kilometers away. A strong, healthy young man can walk on foot forty or fifty kilometers a day. The journey these women, children and old people must face will take five days and five nights at least. There will be no food to be found in the villages, no trains, no buses to transport them. They must walk and as they walked they staggered and stumbled with cut, bruised feet along that thin, white road the fascists bombed them from the air and fired at them from their ships at sea”.

“... In Almeria we heard for the first time that our town had fallen and were warned to go no further as no one knew where the frontline now was but everyone was sure that the town of Motril had also fallen. We thought it important to proceed and discover how the evacuation of the wounded was proceeding. We set out at six o'clock in the evening along the Malaga road and a few miles on we met the head of the piteous procession. Here were the strong with all their goods on donkeys, mules and horses. We passed them, and the farther we went the more pitiful the sights became. Thousands of children, we counted five thousand under ten years of age, and at least one thousand of them barefoot and many of them clad only in a single garment. They were slung over their mother's shoulders or clung to her hands. Here a father staggered along with two children of one and two years of age on his back in addition to carrying pots and pans or some treasured possession. The immense stream of people became so dense we could barely force the car through them. At eighty eight kilometers from Almeria they beseeched us to go no further, that the fascists were just behind. By this time we had passed so many distressed women and children that we thought it best to turn back and start transporting the worst cases to safety.

It was difficult to choose which to take. Our car was besieged by a mob of frantic mothers and fathers who with tired outstretched arms held up to us their children, their eyes and faces swollen and congested by four days of sun and dust.

«Take this one...» «See this child...» «This one is wounded...» Children with bloodstained rags wrapped around their arms and legs, children without shoes, their feet swollen to twice their size crying helplessly from pain, hunger and fatigue. Two hundred kilometers of misery. Imagine four days and four nights, hiding by day in the hills as the fascist barbarians pursued them by plane, walking by night.

(Fragmento del libro original de Norman Bethune)