International Brigade Memorial Trust
The volunteer gardeners who look after the International Brigades memorial wall in Madrid’s Fuencarral Cemetery have been hard at work this April.
They’ve been cleaning, weeding, fertilising and planting new greenery and flowers for the rest of 2026.
The memorial wall includes a plaque dedicated to the units of the XV Brigade, including the British Battalion. It was unveiled in 2009 by British ambassador Denise Holt.
From now on, the brigade of gardeners from Madrid will visit the cemetery most weeks to tend the flowers and shrubs – and to water them in the Spanish capital’s searing summer temperatures.
Other plaques on the memorial wall remember the French, Italian, Polish, Jewish and Yugoslav International Brigaders. Nearby, there is also a memorial to the Soviet aviators who died in the Spanish Civil War.
This year, the gardeners have paid special attention to the plot dedicated to the Spanish anti-fascists who died fighting in Europe during the Second World War. It had been somewhat neglected with wilted plants and plastic flowers, they report.
Some 450 Brigaders, including several Britons, were buried in the cemetery during the war in Spain. Following Franco’s victory, their bodies were exhumed and dumped nearby in 1941.
