Fleeing Francois the story of the Basque children who came to Wales during the Spanish Civil War. It is a remarkable chapter in British and, in particular, Welsh history. The Basque government, because of Franco’s imposed blockade of the north coast from March 1937, which effectively prevented ships from bringing food to Bilbao, had asked nations to accept children refugees on a temporary basis so they should escape the famine and bombing which was occurring daily. By May, the French had already accepted hundreds of Basque children. However, the British government prevaricated, being reluctant to accept refugees, claming that...

The summer of 1937 was for many in Wales a brief interlude of normality. The mood, as reflected in the press, was optimistic, even complacent. Royal tours and sporting success inoculated the public against contagion from a hostile world.

In July, the newly crowned King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were on a royal progress through the country. Their route took them to Newport, Swansea and Cardiff via the mining valleys. Everywhere, they were received by large, enthusiastic crowds. In Aberystwyth, 8,000 young people took part in a gymnastic display for the royal couple. In Caernarfon the king knighted the...

The welsh writer and politician Ambrose Bebb was probably right when he derided as fanciful the idea that the Welsh and the Basques shared a common ancestry, but David Lloyd George had never been one to allow the literal truth to stand in the way of sentiment.¹ In March 1937, the former wartime leader sprang into action, donating £250 from his own pocket to help finance theBlackworth, a freighter loaded with sugar, flour, fruit and dried salt fish bound for blockaded Bilbao. To the quayside at Hull bounded the Welsh Wizard. There on the jetty, shaking his white locks...

To be welsh, so the story goes, is to be on the side of the oppressed against the oppressor. Working-class solidarity, internationalism and political radicalism are part of what defines us. They are a fragment of our collective memory, a strand of our DNA. At each juncture of history, when political or social transformation has seemed possible, Wales has thrown in its lot with those advocating change.¹ This thesis has seldom been tested with more rigour than it was in those years following the attempt by a group of army officers to overthrow the legitimate government of Spain. The response...

On 10 JULY 1937 Newport railway station was decked out in bunting. The decoration was in anticipation of the arrival of the king and queen on their tour of Wales. On the platform, a large welcoming party was assembled. It consisted of some of the most prominent members of south Wales society: politicians, academics and businessmen. But these luminaries were not gathered there to greet the royal couple. The train that they were expecting had a much less patrician cargo; it was crammed with fifty-two children and assorted helpers. Some of the most eminent men in Wales had turned out...

Alvaro velasco was taken by his parents to see the king of Spain, Alfonso XIII, as he crossed the border into exile. It is one of his earliest memories. Six years later, Alvaro himself sought refuge in a foreign land. He was one of 4,000 asylum seekers crammed onto a redundant cruise liner which sailed for Southampton in one of the greatest evacuations of children in history. Most of those children eventually returned to live in Spain, but for a few their exile stretched to a lifetime. After many twists and turns, Alvaro came to live in Carmarthen. It was...

At first sight Josefina thought that Cambria House was bleak and a bit overwhelming. Paula just remembers how vast the building seemed: ‘I thought it was some sort of palace.’ She had gone from the camp at North Stoneham to a colony in Bristol, but the experience was too traumatic: ‘I couldn’t take it. I felt that no bugger wanted me. Pulled from pillar to post, I had lost my confidence.’ A cousin wrote asking that Paula and her two sisters be sent to Cambria House. It was a good move. Cambria House was a place of healing and settling....

On the bar of the Forest Arms Hotel in Brechfa, black and sleek, was a stuffed raven. In life, the bird had been the landlord’s pet, ‘the scourge and delight’ of the village. He had been given the name Bob and many stories were told about his escapades flying across the wooded hills of Cwm Cothi. Such was the bird’s fame that in 1933 it had featured in a series of a short essays by Gareth Jones, a journalist with a worldwide reputation. Jones tells how, one afternoon in 1933, he descended from the slopes of Pencrugmelyn into the village...

Antonia Lapera was born in Bilbao in 1912. The eldest of three children, she was brought up on Calle Zavala, a winding road that led to the outskirts of the city and upwards onto a mountain path. On saints’ days, young girls would dance thejotaalong this road, following the fife and drum man all the way to the beauty spot of San Roque. One of these dancing girls was Antonia’s sister, Lola. The youngest of the three siblings, she was always getting into trouble and fighting with other youngsters in the neighbourhood. The two girls shared a second-floor...

Old Colwyn, beside the sea and in the shelter of mountains, has long been a haven for those seeking to recover health and happiness. Like its more brazen sisters, Abergele and Colwyn Bay, the town owed its prosperity to the flood of holidaymakers who arrived each summer by railway from the industrial conurbations. To these visitors, in the summer of 1937, were added twenty young Basque refugees.

The north Wales colony had its genesis in a single paragraph in a Colwyn Bay newspaper. A short article on an inside page, sandwiched between items on the Pier Pavilion concerts and the...

Despite supportive headlines in theSouth Wales Argusdeclaring that the refugees ‘have many friends at Caerleon’, not quite everyone welcomed the ‘Basque bairns’. On Friday 2 July 1937, a meeting had been held at Newport town hall. Its purpose was to put the seal of approval on the use of Cambria House. A working party of nine was to be chosen, who would collaborate with other local committees to oversee the running of a home for fifty children. The board seeking approval was a model of civic propriety consisting of two aldermen, three clergymen, the headmistress of the local...

The december 1938 edition of theCambria House Journalhad been dedicated to ‘the great heroism of our soldiers, who are fighting unceasingly in the trenches, rain and snow, day and night, in horrible cold, in order to save our dear fatherland from the invaders’. The dream of turning back the Nationalist tide in Catalonia and achieving an epic victory for the Republic was still alive. No such illusion was possible by May. The wall newspaper on display in Cambria House showed government positions marked on a map by republican flags of red, yellow and mauve. It was a grim...

Alvaro did not want to go back home but he had no choice. It was 1939 and another war menaced Europe, so he was hastily repatriated. He arrived back in Spain to find his brother, a former soldier in the Republican Army, in a concentration camp. His father and mother had gone back to San Sebastian. They were not running anymore. The elation and the despair of his return remain with Alvaro:

It was marvellous, you know, just to see your mother when you have missed her, we embraced we cried. But the poverty, it was horrendous, it was absolutely...