Only fragments survive to witness the passage of more than 60,000 people interned in the Camp of Rivesaltes between 1942 and 1966.
From their small grocery shop in Perpignan, the 3 courageous Sabaté women, joined the fight against fascism.
Our own little bit of horror and inhumanity here in the P-O. Never forget lest it happen again.
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
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.
Elisabeth Eidenbenz was the remarkable Swiss woman who created La Maternité Suisse in Elne as a refuge for expectant mothers exiled from Spain during La Retirada and World War II.