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| Refugees during the Spanish Civil War |
Next year is the 80th Anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. I am calling that war the Black Hole Crusade, and that is the title of the third of my Spanish Civil War novels.
I have completed the first in the series. "Judas in Malaga, '37" covers a week in February 1937 which saw the Fascist forces under the command of General Quiepo De Llano overrun the Andalusian port town of Malaga. As the Fascist forces were arriving from the west, the order is given by the Republican Military Authority to evacuate the city.
Those who are able-bodied pack their possessions into carts or carry them on their backs and head east. The refugees must walk along a narrow coast road between the mountains and the Mediterranean. They are targets for the shells of German and Spanish ships in the harbor, and Italian bombers based in Mallorca. Without food or medical provisions, young and old alike must walk 110 miles to the overburdened facilites of the port town of Almeria.
Among those in the desperate procession are a Spanish couple in their 60's: Anunzia and Luis. They had tried to get papers from the Anarchist committee in Malaga to allow them to go back to England with their employers, but they were denied.
Hugh and Gretchen North, waiting in Gibraltar for a ship to take them to safety in London, have second thoughts about abandoning the loyal household help. He is a writer from Britain, and she is his American wife. In a move born of compassion, they get passage on a ship to Almeria. From there they walk back against the river of refugees, seeking Anunzia and Luis. They have no plan except to find their friends, and protect them if they can.
Along the way they are joined in their Quixotic quest by three others: a young Austrian woman, a Spanish Anarchist miliciano, and a young man with cerebral palsy who has been abandoned by his family.
It is a dangerous quest. It is an impossible time, when the best and worst of human nature is on full view. The survivors will never view life with the same values and desires, and those who do not survive inspire questions about the nature of loyalty, love and destiny that no political agenda can answer.
