Remains of the Republican retreat at Portbou

It could simply be a Buick Series 27 Master Six that had been involved in an accident on any dusty highway, but, in fact, it is a mechanical example of a massive human tragedy. Between 27 January and 10 February 1939, hundreds of thousands of Catalans, along with refugees from Madrid and Andalucia, soldiers from the Republican army, and officials of the Generalitat and the government of the Republic fled the advancing Francoist forces. 

On 26 January, Barcelona fell to General Yagüe and the roads leading to the French border filled with immense convoys of refugees. In Figueres, just inside the border, prime minister Juan Negrín still had the willpower to convoke another session of the Republican parliament. Meanwhile, between 250,000 and 500,000 peoeple did whatever they could to reach the border crossings in order to avoid what they believed to be certain repression. Neither Madrid nor Valencia had surrendered but when the Francoists took control of the entire border, it was clear that the Republic was finished.

Photographers like Robert Capa immortalized those who pushed through winter snowstorms and Royal Italian Air Force bombing to cross the border at Portbou, Molló or Camprodon. When the refugees arrived at the border, which had been opened on 27 January, the French police disarmed the soldiers and sent them, as well as the women and children, to refugee or prisoner camps. The French press was full of photos of huge piles of weapons. And of the tanks, trucks and vehicles of those fortunate enough not to have to walk there, on the waste grounds of Roussillon.

For some, the route from Barcelona, or from whichever village at which they joined the convoy, was the beginning of their exile. For those who pursued them without the slightest humanitarian sentiment, it was the beginning of the end of their victorious war.

This photograph brings together the variety of sensations surrounding this drama. The Republican authorities tried to organize the evacuation, but everything was chaos. Some, like the presidents of Catalonia and the Basque Country, Lluís Companys and José Antonio Aguirre, had the luxury of vehicles and accommodation ready for them before they went into exile on 5 February, the same day as Manuel Azaña, the president of the Republic. The vast majority of the refugees did not, and had to cross the border on foot.

Antoni Campañà (1909-1989), a professional photographer and driver for the Republican Air Force, chose not to go into exile. Instead, he pr4esented himself to the Francoist occupiers in the Bruc barracks in Barcelona. He was released without any consequences, and with the help of a Francoist colleague, he took picture of the remains of this massive exile of which he had not been a part. Rather than the thousands of people involved, his shots of the mechanical remains pf the Retirada at Portbou captured their absence. The car he photographed on the Barcelona Road, that had been thrown over a cliff after it had broken down or run out of gas, explains the drama without showing the bodies or crying children who had passed by there shortly before.