The Ships of Hope (1939-1945)

As the Francoists advanced through Catalonia at the start of 1939, some 450,000 people fled to France. The French government put them into hastily prepared concentration camps, and then did what it could to persuade them to return to Spain. Almost no countries in Europe opened their borders to the Spanish refugees, but Latin America and, to an extent, the Soviet Union were more welcoming.

This map shows the ships that carried those Republican refugees into exile in Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, North Africa, and the Soviet Union, and -in red numbers – how many people went to each of those places. It also indicates the four organizations dedicated to helping the refugees. Two were Spanish: The Spanish Republican Evacuation Service (SERE) and the Spanish Republican Aid Committee (JARE); and two were Mexican: the Technical Committee for Aid to Spanish Refugees (CTARE) and the Committee for Aid to the Children of the Spanish People. 

Finally, the highlights show some of the individuals who played a key role in helping these refugees. These include Archibald Dickson, the captain of the British merchant vessel Stanhope, who disobeyed orders from the ship’s owner and took onboard as many of the people crowded onto the Alicante docks as he could as the city was about to fall to the Francoists at the end of the war and carried them to Algiers; Amalia Solórzano Bravo, the wife of Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas, founder of the Committee for Aid to the Children of the Spanish People; Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet who, as Special Consul for Spanish Immigration in Paris, organized the voyage of the Winnipeg; and Natalio Botana Miralles, the Argentinian newspaper editor who led a media campaign that convinced the president to allow the refugees on board the Massilia to enter the country.