International Brigade Memorial Trust
Our thanks must once again go to a group of volunteers in Madrid who are tending the memorials to the International Brigades in Fuencarral cemetery in the north of the city.
The volunteer gardeners have replanted the flower beds to ensure plenty of autumn colour. And they visit the cemetery every week to do the watering and weeding.
During the summer heat the same group made sure the plants survived the searing heat and drought. watered. See the story here.
They also featured on the cover of ¡No pasarán!, the IBMT’s magazine.
Among the plaques at the cemetery is one for the 15th Brigade, which included the British Battalion and the American and Canadian battalions. Part-funded by the IBMT, it was unveiled in 2009.
The new plants were bedded in in time for 1 November, Spain’s Day of the Dead, explains Álvaro Angosto, one of the team of gardeners. On that day cemeteries receive large numbers of visitors.
Others in the team are Sofía Amechqar, Paula Cabildo, Maica Gómez, Nieves Hernández, Helios Lizcano, Isabel d'Olhaberriague and Enrique Ruiz.
There are also plaques on the memorial wall to remember the French, Italian, Jewish and Yugoslav International Brigaders. There is also a memorial to the Soviet aviators who died in the Spanish Civil War.
Some 450 Brigaders, including several Britons, were buried in the cemetery. Following Franco’s victory their bodies were exhumed and dumped nearby in 1941.
Searches for the site of the mass grave have been conducted this year, so far without success. They have been organised in the face of controversial plans by Madrid City Council to build a waste facility adjacent to the cemetery.
