As a tribute to Herminio Martínez, who died on 29 December 2019, we reprint the speech he made at the IBMT’s commemoration on London’s Southbank on 1 July 2017. Eighty ears previously Herminio had arrived in England, aged seven, as one of the nearly 4,000 children who were evacuated from Spain’s Basque Country while it was being bombed by Franco’s German and Italian allies.