You would think that the shameful, over crowded camps on the P-O beaches would be unlikely places for art to flourish….READ ON
1939 was a difficult year for France. Not only did it experience the indignity of an invasion on its North East border from Hitler’s hordes late in the year, the country suffered a very different incursion in its far South-West in the early months of the year.
Take a walk in Argelès in the footsteps of the Retirada on the ’circuit de la Mémoire’. to mark the 85th anniversary of the opening of the camp on the beach.
In late January/early February 1939 nearly half a million Spanish civilians and soldiers fled to France. The word Retirada (Spanish for Retreat) was adopted by historians to signify this exodus, which was the biggest single influx of refugees ever known in France.
Following our recent articles on la Retirada, a P-O Life reader very kindly contacted us with photos and memories of a hike that they undertook back in 2017.
During the Retirada, Spanish Republicans fleeing the Franco regime poured over the border into the P-O. But it wasn’t just people, many important pieces of artwork joined the exodus.
la Jonquera Exile Memorial Museum (MUME), an immaculately kept and poignant reminder of the Retirada, a place for ‘memory, history and critical reflexion’.
La Retirada: Remembering the refugees of the Franco regime
2019 marks the 80th anniversary of the exodus of the Spanish Republicans fleeing persecution from the Franco regime.
The end of the Spanish civil war led to an influx of Spanish refugees into the Pyrénées Orientales. Known as the Retirada (retreat in Spanish), this was a fairly ignominous chapter in the local history complete with concentration camps
