CORBERA D'EBRE OLD TOWN: THE BATTLE OF THE EBRE

Dawn in the Old Town of Corbera d'Ebre, Terra Alta

Today, The Grandma has had a day full of deep emotions. She has visited the ruins Old Town of Corbera d'Ebre, a symbol of the memory of the Spanish Civil War in the Ebre lands.

Visiting this place is an enourmous experience. Silence and destruction full your heart with pain and a great feeling of injustice but also a great spirit of survivence and resilience. You can destroy the lives of a total generation but you can not destroy their thoughts and they are going to persist in the future thanks to the oral tradition and the Historical Memory.

The Grandma has remembered some words of one of her friends, Albert, who once explained her that: There was an ancient Indian saying that something lives only as long as the last person who remembers it. His people had come to trust memory over history. Memory, like fire, is radiant and immutable while history serves only those who seek to control it, those who douse the flame of memory in order to put out the dangerous fire of truth. Beware these men for they are dangerous themselves and unwise. Their false history is written in the blood of those who might remember and of those who seek the truth.  

We need to preserve our Historical Memory. It refers to the way by which groups of people create and then identify with specific narratives about historical periods or events. Historical Memory is sometimes also called Collective Memory or Social Memory.

On a day like today, we have to remember another terrible fact in our recent history, the execution of Lluís Companys seventy-eight years ago.

Lluís Companys i Jover (June 21, 1882-October 15, 1940) was the President of Catalonia from 1934 and during the Spanish Civil War. Exiled after the war, he was captured and handed over by the Nazi secret police, the Gestapo, to the Spanish State of Francisco Franco, who had him executed by firing squad in 1940 in Montjuïc Castle, Barcelona.

More information: Barcelonas

Spanish Civil War was a terrible experience that hasn't been closed in spite of the current efforts that arrive from different statements like the UNO reclaiming historic reparation with the victims, especially these victims whose bodies are still buried under roads and hundreds of located fosses along the Spanish lands.

During the visit to the Old Town of Corbera d'Ebre, The Grandma has remembered a beautiful tribute to Teresa Rebull in Barcelona eight years ago. It was the last time The Grandma could see her on a stage.

Teresa Rebull was a nurse for the POUM who later became a singer. She was actively involved in the May Days events and punished for that. She later escaped Spain, where she could face danger from both Stalinists and Francoists, for France. In France she would join the Maquis after the Nazi invasion. After the war she became musically associated to Nova Cançó. She composed two beautiful songs which talk about exile (Jo sé que un dia) and the Battle of Ebre (Paisatge de l'Ebre).

Visiting the ruins of Corbera d'Ebre, Terra Alta

It has been a sad day and because of this, The Grandma has preferred to share these moments with Claire Fontaine and Joseph de Ca'th Lon and leave her English studies for a day.

Looking out onto looming mountain peaks and surrounded by extensive vineyards, Corbera d’Ebre is an idyllic Catalonian town centered around a ruinous history. Built around the slopes of a graceful hill, the heights are occupied only by rubble that once consisted the medieval heart of the village, before it was destroyed nearly 80 years ago.

Perhaps the most decisive battle in determining the outcome of the Spanish Civil War, the Battle of the Ebre was certainly the larges and longest battle of the conflict, running from July 25 to November 16 of 1938. A wide-ranging, multi-action offensive that saw the Republican forces try and disastrously fail to reunite their divided front, the Battle of the Ebre claimed Corbera d’Ebre as one of its many victims.

Burnt, bombed and partially eradicated from the face of the earth, the town’s devastation provided a striking parallel to the Second Spanish Republic, which was likewise demolished only a few months later.

To commemorate the men, women and children who lost their lives during the Battle of the Ebre, the Government of Catalonia has maintained the ruins of Corbera d’Ebre’s Old Town as a memorial. Its eerie emptiness, represented by devastated baroque Church of Sant Pere, the empty windows, the crumbling walls that once stood tall, the caved in wells that once quenched thirst, conduct visitors through a walking tour of a graveyard for many, and a trauma for most.

More information: Poble Vell

The Battle of the Ebre (or Ebro), in Catalan la Batalla de l'Ebre, was the longest and largest battle of the Spanish Civil War. It took place between July and November 1938, with fighting mainly concentrated in two areas on the lower course of the Ebre River, the Terra Alta comarca of Catalonia, and the Auts area close to Faió in the lower Matarranya, Eastern Lower Aragon. These sparsely populated areas saw the largest array of armies in the war.

The results of the battle were disastrous for the Second Spanish Republic, with tens of thousands of dead and wounded and little effect on the advance of the Nationalists.

Visiting the sites of the Battle of Ebre

By 1938, the Second Spanish Republic was in dire straits. The Republican Northern zone had fallen, and in the winter of 1937/38 the Republican Popular Army had spent its forces in the Battle of Teruel, a series of bloody combats in subzero temperatures around the city of Teruel, which ended up being retaken by the Francoist army in February.

Then, the Nationalists launched an offensive in Aragon in March without giving their enemies a chance to recover. Fighting in the middle of bitter winter temperatures, the exhausted Republican army could offer only feeble resistance. 

By April 15, Franco's troops reached the Mediterranean Sea at Vinaròs, cutting Republican territory in two. As a result, the Nationalist army conquered Lleida and the hydroelectric dams that provided much of the Catalan industrial areas with electricity.

Nevertheless, on 17 March 1938, after the Anschluss, the French government decided to reopen the frontier. The Republican Army in Catalonia received 18,000 tons of war material between March and mid-June and twelve new divisions were formed from Nationalist prisoners-of-war and an extended call-up, which included conscripts that ranged in age from sixteen years old, the so-called Lleva del Biberó, the baby-bottle call-up, to middle-aged fathers. A new army, the Ebre's army, was then formed.

Meanwhile, the Francoist armies attacked the XYZ Line north of Valencia with the intention of capturing the Republican capital, instead of advancing towards Barcelona, fearing that France would enter the war in support of the ailing Republic

More information: Patrimoni Cultural-GenCat

The International Brigades were paramilitary units set up by the Communist International to assist the Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. The organisation existed for two years, from 1936 until 1938.

It is estimated that during the entire war, between 32,000 and 35,000 members served in the International Brigades, including 15,000 who died in combat; however, there were never more than 20,000 brigade members present on the front line at one time.

Homage to La Lleva del Biberó, Serra de Pàndols

The headquarters of the brigade was located at the Gran Hotel, Albacete, Castilla-La Mancha. They participated in the Battle of Madrid, Jarama, Guadalajara, Brunete, Belchite, Teruel, Aragon and the Ebre. Most of these ended in defeat.

For the last year of its existence, the International Brigades were integrated into the Spanish Republican Army as part of the Spanish Foreign Legion. The organisation was dissolved on 23 September 1938 by Spanish Prime Minister, Juan Negrín, in an attempt to get more support from the liberal democracies on the Non-Intervention Committee.

The International Brigades represented Comintern and Joseph Stalin's commitment to provide assistance to the Spanish Republican cause, with arms, logistics, military advisers and the NKVD, just as Fascist Italy, Corporatist Portugal and Nazi Germany were providing assistance to the opposing Nationalist insurgency.

The largest number of volunteers came from France, where the French Communist Party had many members, and communist exiles from Italy and Germany. A large number of Jews from the English-speaking world and Eastern Europe also participated.

Republican volunteers who were opposed to Stalinism did not join the Brigades but formed the separate popular front, the POUM, formed from Trotskyist, Bukharinist and other anti-Stalinist groups, which was composed of a mix of Spaniards and foreign volunteers, such as George Orwell, or anarcho-syndicalist groups such as the Durruti Column, the IWA and the CNT.

More information: International Brigades (United Kingdom)

After visiting the Old Town of Corbera d'Ebre and remembering these recent facts, The Grandma has watched an interesting documentary film in English and Catalan about two Britons, Barney Green and Katie Green, whose grandparents participated in the Battle of the Ebre, one as a soldier and another as a nurse.

 The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. 

Lies will pass into history. 

George Orwell