Belchite

Spain may be a great place to hang out these days but it has an extremely problematic past going from hundreds of years ago to fairly recently.

In the late 1930’s Spain’s progressive, democratically-elected government was overthrown by Francisco Franco who, after a three-year civil war, ruled Spain as a fascist dictator until he died in 1975. During his decades in power, he cleverly promoted Spain as a fun international vacation destination while tourists were largely unaware of the fact that anyone who criticized him was liable to end up in a mass grave or spend years in prison. I know someone in Spain whose best friend was born in prison in 1973 because her mother was arrested for political activism while she was pregnant, and being pregnant is the only reason she wasn’t executed.

During the civil war Franco aggressively went after any cities that opposed him politically (sound familiar?). Guernica was one of the victims and another was Belchite, where a battle was fought in 1937. A combination of Spanish fascist forces and Nazi airplanes demolished the city. Instead of rebuilding the old city, the people rebuilt about ½ mile away and left the old town as it was after Franco’s assault. It’s still there today as a testament to the brutality of fascism. I made the trip out there today.

Last week on my bike ride, I rode past a building on the Ebro River in the middle of nowhere that the map identified as a prison for pro-democracy fighters who had been captured during the war (pictured here).

At dinner that night, I explained to the Russians what the purpose of the building was, explained that Spain has only been a democracy for 50 years and told them that before that it was a brutal dictatorship. The father shrugged his shoulders and said “Russia has always been a dictatorship and it will never change.”  It’s a big world out there.