Hats off in this hot summer weather to a group of Spaniards who are looking after the memorial garden for the International Brigades at Fuencarral Cemetery in Madrid.

Regularly each week they visit the cemetery to keep alive the flowers around a memorial wall dedicated to the international volunteers.

Among the plaques is one for the 15th Brigade, which included the British Battalion and battalions of American and Canadian volunteers. It was unveiled in 2009 by British ambassador Denise Holt, with funding shared between the IBMT and the US-based Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives.

The need to tend the plants in Madrid’s infernal summer temperatures is underlined by Álvaro Angosto, one of the team of volunteer gardeners. ‘We try to water them a couple of times a week,’ he says. ‘A large water drum has also been installed to ensure continuous irrigation.’

From left: Nieves Hernández, Paula Cabildo, Maica Gómez, Helios Lizcano and Álvaro Angosto. Three other volunteers not pictured are Sofía Amechqar, Isabel d'Olhaberriague and Enrique Ruiz.

He adds: ‘And when money is needed for replanting, it’s really heartening that so many people pitch in.’

Other plaques on the memorial wall 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.

Helios Lizcano makes adjustments to the irrigation tank.