During the Second World War, resistance movements in the Pyrenees-Orientales helped hundreds of refugees, allied soldiers and airmen to escape from occupied France across the border into Spain.
Young Australian Bruce Dowling arrived in France in 1938 to improve his French. He ended up helping hundreds of allied servicemen to escape from occupied France and paid the ultimate price, beheaded by the Nazis 29th birthday in 1943.
Enamoured of both the beauty and long and fascinating history of Port-Vendres, the Great Port Vendres Tapestry Association was started in July 2015 to create a large tapestry of the history of the town.
A simplification of the convoluted military history of the Cote Vermeille
Our own little bit of horror and inhumanity here in the P-O. Never forget lest it happen again.
Symbol of Catalan resistance during WW2, the village of Valmanya on the CD 13 coming from Vinça, was totally destroyed by the Germans in August 1944, not long before the liberation, in reprisal against resistance fighters operating in the area .
la Jonquera Exile Memorial Museum (MUME), an immaculately kept and poignant reminder of the Retirada, a place for ‘memory, history and critical reflexion’.
The Retirada. Nearly half a million Spanish civilians and soldiers fled to France. The P-O authorities were unprepared and hostile.
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.
You would think that the shameful, over crowded camps on the P-O beaches would be unlikely places for art to flourish….READ ON