The fort of Carchuna

In May 1938, large groups of Republican prisoners of war attempted to escape. One was a complete success; the other ended in a massacre. 

Three hundred and eight Asturian soldiers captured by the Francoists after their victory in the north, were being held in the fort of Carchuna on the coast of Granada. Carchuna was very close to the front, and on May 16 four officers managed to reach the Republican lines. With the information they provided, a commando operation to rescue the rest of the prisoners was planned.  Two launches carrying 35 volunteeers, including five members of the International Brigades, left Castell de Ferro on the 23rd. They landed in four groups: one cut the phone lines that connected the fort to Motril and Calahonda; a second positioned themselves on the Calahonda road to cover the escapes; the third carried the explosives; and the last, most numerous, group carried out the assault. 

After taking the fort, they shot the commanding officer and four subordinates who the prisoners said had treated them especially cruelly while two sergeants and twenty soldiers joined the attackers. (Some sources say they were taken as hostages.) Twenty-five prisoners chose to remain in the fort. The prisoners and their liberators set out for the Republican lines in two columns. They encountered some Francoist soldiers along the way, but a Republican artillery barrage created the diversion they needed to reach their goal. The plaque placed on the gate to the fort to record these events has been defaced a number of times since it was installed in 2018. 

At almost the same time, an even larger escape attempt began at the fort of San Crisóbal near Pamplona. This one ended in tragedy. The prison, which held political prisoners as well as captured soldiers, was terribly crowded and notorious for the abuse, hunger and disease that brought death to many of the people interned there.  A group of them spent months planning the escape using Esperanto as a secret code.  

The prisoners rebelled at dinner time and succeeded in taking control of the fort. But a guard who was returning and a dissident Falangist who was also a prisoner were able to warn rebel authorities in Pamplona about what was happening. Large numbers of Francoist soldiers soon began arriving. There were 2,400 prisoners in San Crisóbal at the time, but the prisoners had no outside support and only 795 dared to leave, heading for the hills in an attempt to reach France. Only three made it. Of the rest, 585 were captured and 207 killed in the following weeks as soldiers, police, militias and even armed civilians engaged in what was effectively a hunt. 

A monument recalling these events was erected on Mount Ezcaba in 1998. Ultra-rightists vandalized it three times. The final time, in 2009, they destroyed it completely.