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The Grandma has been reflecting on the lives of the thousands upon thousands of Catalans who, while they did not leave their country (having simply walked from the south to the north), left their homes behind, fighting first to stay alive, and later to begin life anew.
Walking across the sand of this beach in Argelers is a way to remember and pay tribute to each and every person who was held captive here, people who fought not only for their lives, but also for their dignity.
The Grandma wants to talk about the Republican exile, the concentration camps and the extraordinary human struggle for dignity, resistance and survival.
Up to 15,000 people would end up losing their lives in the French camps between 1939 and 1945.
Today, Argelers is a peaceful Mediterranean town in Catalunya Nord, known for its long sandy beaches, beautiful landscapes and warm summer days. However, beneath this peaceful landscape lies one of the most painful chapters in contemporary Catalan and European history. They had lost their homes, their possessions and, in many cases, their relatives. But they had not lost their humanity.
On 26 January 1939, Barcelona fell to Franco's forces. The defeat of the Republican army in Catalunya triggered one of the largest refugee movements in twentieth-century European history. During the following weeks, approximately half a million people crossed the French border in what became known as La Retirada, the Retreat. Among them were Republican soldiers, political activists, intellectuals, teachers, workers, elderly people and thousands of children. Many crossed the mountains on foot, carrying whatever they could save. Some were wounded. Others were sick, hungry or exhausted. Families were separated during the journey, and many people never saw their loved ones again.
For Catalan refugees, crossing the Pyrenees meant travelling from Southern Catalunya to Northern Catalunya, territories that shared centuries of history, culture and language but were separated by an international border. They hoped to find safety. Instead, many discovered that their suffering was far from over.
In early February 1939, the French authorities established a concentration camp on the beach at Argelers. There were initially no proper barracks, adequate sanitation facilities or sufficient medical services. Thousands of refugees were confined behind barbed wire, exposed to the winter cold, the wind and the rain.
The Mediterranean Sea, traditionally associated with freedom and movement, became part of a landscape of confinement. People slept directly on the sand, sometimes digging holes to protect themselves from the wind. Food was insufficient, clean water was scarce, and disease spread rapidly. Lice, scabies, malnutrition and infections became part of everyday life.
Some refugees died from illness, exposure and the consequences of these appalling conditions. Others survived through mutual assistance, solidarity and an extraordinary determination to remain alive. The camp was established by the French Republic, not by Nazi Germany. This distinction matters historically. Argelers was not a Nazi extermination camp, and it was not designed for industrialised mass murder. Nevertheless, it was a place of forced confinement where people who had escaped persecution were subjected to degrading and sometimes deadly conditions. The suffering of human beings should never be forgotten simply because it occurred outside the most notorious places of twentieth-century history.
Among the many personal stories connected with the Republican exile is that of Mercè Sanz i Castells, born in Lleida in 1933. She was only six years old when she crossed the Pyrenees with her older brother in 1939. Her father had been a Republican schoolteacher, and the collapse of Republican Catalunya forced the children into exile. What followed was a childhood marked by separation, fear and suffering.
According to her later testimony, she was initially taken in by a family in France before being interned and subsequently transferred through concentration camps under Nazi control. She recalled hunger, violence, painful medical procedures and the constant fear of death.
Her experiences were eventually recorded in Una nena catalana als camps nazis (A Catalan Girl in the Nazi Camps), published in 2015. For decades, Mercè found it extremely difficult to speak about her childhood. Her memories were fragmented and traumatic, and she could not always identify precisely where the events had occurred. Her testimony reminds us that survival does not necessarily mean that suffering has ended. Some wounds remain invisible for an entire lifetime.
After the war, Mercè became a nurse, dedicating her professional life to caring for others. Her story represents both the vulnerability of children caught in war and the extraordinary capacity of human beings to rebuild their lives.
The history of the camps is not only a history of suffering. It is also a history of solidarity. Despite hunger, fear and uncertainty, many Republican refugees organised themselves to help others. They shared food, cared for the sick, maintained political and cultural activities and tried to preserve their dignity. Some later joined the French Resistance against Nazi occupation. Others continued their struggle against fascism in different ways.
The experience of exile transformed their lives, but it did not necessarily destroy their ideals. One of the most remarkable examples of humanitarian solidarity was the Maternity of Elna, established by the Swiss humanitarian worker Elisabeth Eidenbenz. There, hundreds of babies were born in safer conditions than those experienced by their mothers in the refugee camps.
In a world devastated by war, such initiatives demonstrated that compassion and courage could still exist. Sometimes resistance meant fighting. Sometimes it meant protecting a child, sharing a piece of bread or helping another person survive another night.
Not everyone who survived the Republican exile returned home. For many, France became their permanent home. Teresa Rebull, born Teresa Soler i Pi in Sabadell in 1919, was one of those Catalans whose life was profoundly transformed by exile. A political activist associated with the POUM, she left Catalunya after the Republican defeat and eventually settled in Catalunya Nord. During the Second World War, she collaborated with the French Resistance. Later, she became one of the most distinctive voices of Catalan song, setting poetry to music and helping preserve Catalan culture beyond the political frontier.
Her life took her through different cities before she eventually settled in Banyuls de la Marenda, in Catalunya Nord, where she died in 2015.
Teresa Rebull's story demonstrates that exile does not necessarily erase cultural identity. Sometimes, distance makes the desire to preserve a language, a memory and a homeland even stronger.
For many Republican exiles, returning was impossible or undesirable while Franco's dictatorship remained in power. They created families, worked, raised children and established new communities. Their lives continued, but their memories travelled with them.
When we discuss the atrocities of the twentieth century, the Nazi concentration and extermination camps occupy a central place in European historical memory. And rightly so.
The Holocaust was a systematic genocide, organised by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, that murdered six million Jews and millions of other victims of Nazi persecution and mass violence. However, remembering the Holocaust must not mean forgetting other systems of confinement, repression and human rights violations.
The French internment camps, the Francoist concentration camps, the Soviet Gulag and many other places of persecution also belong to the history of human suffering. These systems had different origins, purposes and degrees of violence. They should not be treated as historically identical. But their histories raise fundamental questions about power, responsibility, human dignity and the treatment of vulnerable people.
At Argelers, the refugees had already endured the violence of war. What they needed was protection. What many received was barbed wire.
Today, visitors can walk along the beach at Argelers without seeing the camp that once occupied its sands. The barracks have disappeared. The barbed wire is gone. The Mediterranean continues to wash against the shore. But history has not disappeared. It survives in photographs, testimonies, books, memorials and the memories transmitted by families.
Every refugee had a name. Every child had a childhood that deserved to be protected. Every person who died had a life that mattered. And every survivor carried a story that deserves to be heard. Remembering Argelers is not about remaining imprisoned in the past. It is about understanding how easily fear, political hatred and indifference can transform people seeking refuge into people deprived of their dignity. It is also about recognising the strength of those who resisted, survived and rebuilt their lives.
We cannot change the past. But we can learn from it, preserve its memory and work to prevent its tragedies from happening again. Because the greatest tribute we can pay to those who suffered is not simply to remember their pain. It is to defend the humanity that others tried to take away from them.
More information: Memorial Argeles
I ja som a terra francesa, terra d’exili,
de dolor, de sofriments,
on havíem de començar un altre calvari,
llarg i difícil, ple d’obstacles i misèria’…
'Hospitalitat? Camps de concentració fil ferrades,
barraques, polls, puces, epidèmies, gana i fred…'
And now we are on French soil, a land of exile,
pain, and suffering
where we were to begin another ordeal,
long and difficult, full of obstacles and misery…
'Hospitality? Concentration camps, barbed wire,
barracks, lice, fleas, epidemics, hunger, and cold…'
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