Pablo pays his respects in Scotland

IBMT Scotland Secretary Mike Arnott writes…

On 12 July, Pablo Hernández, representing the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH in Spanish) in Tarancón, Spain, paid his respects at memorials in Perth, Dundee and Kirkcaldy to those who lost their lives fighting fascism in the Spanish Civil War as part of the International Brigade.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Jarama in that bloody war, and the Scottish connection with Pablo’s home town is strong; just inside the entrance to the cemetery in Tarancón, nestling under an olive tree, can be found a memorial dedicated to Dundee-born Allan Craig and to the memory of the other 38 Scottish International Brigaders that fell with him at Jarama.

Flanking the memorial are two memorials bearing the names of 44 local victims of the repression that followed the war’s end in 1939, murdered under a fascist dictatorship that ruled Spain until after the death of General Franco in 1975.

‘The sacrifice of the International Brigaders is one that the democracy-loving people of Spain will never forget, one for which we are enormously grateful,’ said Pablo in Scotland. ‘But sadly there are still elements in Spanish society that would deny their valour, and cover up the atrocities that followed the end of the Spanish Civil War. When we seek to address the past, they call for silence, to not reopen wounds – but we say that a wound that has not yet healed cannot be reopened.’

He continued: ‘In February this year the memorial stones in Tarancón cemetery were defaced by silence-loving vandals.

‘To us, this is a sign that our fight must continue. I want to be here to demonstrate that no matter how much paint they throw, the modern fascists cannot obscure the truth of the Brigaders’ sacrifice, nor will they stop us from exposing the dark secrets of the dictatorship and what we know as the Spanish Holocaust.’

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipOrHbwV5scIF8ra3iGW5yQmClGpKiXucJVP...

Posted on 17 July 2017.