PR 28 - LE CHEMIN DE LA RETIRADA

LE CHEMIN DE LA RETIRADA
PR N°28

A memorial walk through the history of the Spanish refugees to the 505 border milestone.

Memory path that traces the travels of Spanish refugees to border post 505.
La Retirada: German and Italian support makes the republican collapse inevitable after the Battle of the Ebro. The justified fear of bloody reprisals throws half a million Republicans on the border. In the middle of winter, civilians and soldiers swarmed into a department that had not been able to provide an appropriate welcome. Inadequate rail evacuation condemns thousands of men, women and children to crowd into fields before reaching the barbed wire of hastily built camps.

Departure: Vallcebollère municipal car park

THAT' S WORTH A VISIT!

When we walk through the forests, the valleys, the shale blocks that separate Valcebollère and Palau from their Iberian neighbour, we walk through a space full of history. Those who fled Loyalist Spain in 1936 passed through here. Many more were the tens of thousands of republicans pushed towards the border by the nationalist advance in January-February 1939, a painful moment known as the retirada. During the Occupation, how many Jews, fighters, refractories to the STO, sought to achieve freedom by this means! After the departure of the Germans on August 19, 1944, the antifascists, often former FFIs of Spanish origin, believed they were capable of overthrowing Francoism. From this base, they multiplied their support against the Guardia Civil. During the attack on the Val d'Aran in October 1944, the guerrillas' actions throughout the Pyrenees were intended to create a diversion and limit Spanish pressure on Vielha. Violent fighting, which has not been forgotten by the local population, then took place here.

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