Monolith in honor of the Republican airmen interned in the Gurs camp

Among the 450,000 Spaniards who fled to France in the first months of 1939 and were interned in camps in Roussillon and Cerdagne were members of the Republican Air Force.  They were initially interned in the makeshift camp on the beach at Argelès-sur-Mer which lacked even the most basic housing and sanitary conditions. Months later, the French government transferred 5,397 aviators along with members of the International Brigades and the Basque army to a new camp in Gurs, in the western Pyrenees.

Although this new internment camp had sanitary and health facilities, the barracks were of very poor quality, constructed out of thin wooden sheets covered with tarred cloth. There was not enough of this to cover the floors, so the internees had to sleep on bare ground until they could make their own cots. The Republican flyers were housed in E, F, and G blocks. The French provided only meagre rations, but these were supplemented by food packages supplied by the Quakers.

The Spanish aviators tried to get recruited by France to fight in Indochina and there were even conversations with British political and military figures about transferring them and a Republican infantry division to Egypt to defend the Suez Canal. All these initiatives failed and, in the end, the only members of the Republic Air Force who left Gurs were a small number who accepted the offer of asylum in the Soviet Union.

The rest continued to live in the camps in horrible conditions that were improved only through the initiative of the members of the International Brigades. This highly politicized group took charge of organizing the cleaning of the camp, creating cultural workshops, building small monuments to help maintain morale, and building a common front against the French guards.

As the possibility of a war breaking out in Europe increased, France pressured the aviators to join the Foreign Legion, the Foreign Workers’ Companies, or to return to Franco’s Spain. Following the German conquest of France, many of the formers Gurs internees were persecuted by the collaborationist Vichy regime or by the Nazis.

In the summer of 2010, at the initiative of Emile Vallés, president of the Friends of the Gurs Camp, the Association of Aviators of the Republic contributed money to help build this commemorative column at the entrance to the camp to the memory of all the members of the Republican Air Force who had been interned there.

CL