Ghost town in Aragon
Simon Courtauld
Thirty-five miles south of Saragossa, according to the map of Spain, is the town of Belchite. Approaching from the east a flat and featureless arable plain gives way to a valley of fruit and olive trees. A sign points to the town centre, one and half kilometres further on. But there, unsigned and still standing above the cross-roads, is the other town, the Belchite of the Civil War which was besieged and defended for ten days until its surrender in the summer of 1937. Forty years later many of the crumbled buildings remain, the central church tower, its spire holed by mortar shells, still stands as a chilling reminder of the horrors of that war.
In the last week of August 1937 the republicans began an attack in Aragon from the east, on a line almost from Huesca to Teruel. Franco's attention at the time was particularly directed to the north, where on 26 August the important city of Santander fell to the nationalists, who then struck west along the coast and into Asturias. 'They did not abandon their offensive in the north in order to save a small town in the centre,' as Professor Hugh Thomas has written in The Spanish Civil War. In effect Belchite and the other small towns on either side of the river Ebro were left to fend for themselves. However, their resistance and their morale both surprised and debilitated the republican forces which, again according to Hugh Thomas, initially comprised 80,000 troops, 100 tanks and 200 aircraft.
Belchite, in 1937 a town of rather less than 4,000 people, held out until the first week of September while the republicans advanced ten miles beyond the town. Many Englishmen took part in the attack which, according to Ricardo de la Cierva (Francisco Franco: Un Siglo de Espana), marked the first occasion when the five principal International Brigades fought together in a combined operation. Franco did finally divert some of his forces from the north, and in particular sent air support to Aragon. But it was too late for Belchite, which was forced to give up the unequal fight after ten hot, fierce days, on 6 September. The siege is described on a plaque on a wall of the old town as 'one of the most glorious episodes of the crusade'.
On 6 September this year a group of old men wearing blue berets gathered in the square outside the church in the 'new' town of Belchite before morning mass. One was supported by a crutch, a withered arm at his side. The occasion was a private one, with no outsiders present. In the centre of thc square and facing the church with its minaret-tower an inscription, dated 1937, announces the construction of a new Bel chite 'in memory of its unequalled heroism'.
In the old town wild flowers grow in the shell of the church of San Rafael. There is little evidence of recent visitors — a group of local children were playing hide-and-seek in the rubble — but old memories remain. The name of a bar — El Transeunte (The Passer-By), Vinos y Licores —is still legible above a doorway bitten with bullet-holes. Blue ceramic numbers are framed on the walls of crumbled houses. It is a dead and eerie place; but when I was there earlier this month there was one sign of life in old Belchite. A woman, together with her child, has made a home by the arch which gives on to the old town square. She was singing — it sounded appropriately more of a lament — while hanging her washing above a rusted tap which carried a notice warning of contaminated water.
Clearly Franco decreed that the remains of this town should be left as a memorial to and an example of nationalist courage and endurance, but it stands rather as a testimony to the futility of war. When George Orwell went to Spain in 1936 and joined the POUM militia, he went to fight against Fascism and for 'common decency', as he wrote in Homage to Catalonia. No doubt the various members of the International Brigades — British, American, French, Italian and Polish among them were fighting for the same principles. (Equally, the tiny number of Englishmen, like Peter Kemp, who joined the nationalists were fighting against Communism and for common decency.) But when the International Brigades and the republican troops — who included several Russians — came together to destroy a small town, largely unprotected and unassisted, which was inhabited by Carlist supporters, the evidence which remains makes those principles hard to comprehend or justify to-day. In the event the republicans failed to pursue their advance in Aragon, and after six months Belchite was recaptured without much difficulty by the nationalist forces on 10 March 1938.
Today in Aragon, if one can judge from the wealth of graffiti which appears on almost every smooth-surfaced wall, the unions — in particular the Union General de Trabajadores — are reclaiming for the Spanish people the places 'plundered by Fascism'. In Alcaniz a notice announces a meeting of the 'workers commissions' in the bull-ring but hangs confusingly beside an old election poster for Fraga's right-wing Popular Alliance party.
In this part, as elsewhere in Spain, there is much talk of regional government. At the end of last month in Alcaniz the parliamentary representatives of Aragon and Catalonia agreed to press together for autonomy, taking 'all political and technical action necessary'. Sr Suarez, the Prime Minister, has already approved in principle the re-establishment of the Generalitat — the autonomous Catalan government suppressed by Franco in 1938 — and this may be proclaimed by the end of this month. I was not in Barcelona for the celebration of Catalan national day on 11 September, but it was reported that lover 250 were injured.
Barcelona appears more politically alive than ever, and as you walk in the Ramblas it is easy to recall Orwell's street-fighting days in 1937, when Anarchists and Communists went to the barricades and fought it out for four days in May. The POUM (Anarchist) headquarters, the Hotel Falcon, is still doing business, now, ironically, sharing the building with Radio Espana.
Orwell's Animal Farm is on sale in translation with the rather less ambiguous title, Revolucion en la Granja. It is fascinating to see the variety of literature which becomes available when a country is freed from a generation of censorship in a police state. Nine daily newspapers are published in Barcelona, quite apart from the Madrid papers which are on the newsstands by mid-morning. In the Ramblas 'Para la Anarquia' stands next to a volume of Tracticas de Amor en Grupo': In the avenue named after the founder of the Falange — Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera — the university bookshops display numerous volumes of memoirs relating to the civil war, but I found only one by a nationalist, Serrano Starter, who was Franco's brother-in-law and minister of the Interior in his cabinet in 1938. The others all belong to the republican side: by Azaha, Alcala Zamora, (two former presidents of the Republic); the Communist secretarygeneral of the CNT and POUM leader Andres Nin; the Communist general Enrique Lister; and Luis Companys, president of the Generalitat during the war. It is a long way from Belchite in 1937, but now, with so much information about those times available to Spaniards, and the new freedom of expression which will help to shape the country's future, perhaps that ghost town on the plains of Aragon may make a little more sense.
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