Alarm over plans for refuse centre to be built over remains of International Brigaders

Opposition led by the Madrid-based Association of Friends of the International Brigades (AABI)

The municipal authorities in Madrid, which is run by the right-wing PP party, want to install a large rubbish depot right at the back of the wall of the cemetery of Fuencarral, where the AABI suspects that the bodies of International Brigaders were dumped in 1941.  

Amongst those bodies, according to the list drafted in 1937 (see below), were some British volunteers, including Julian Bell, Samuel Walsh and Arnold Gens [Jeans].

The AABI is liaising with the socialist government’s secretary of state for democratic memory on this issue, and they are urgently trying to contact any relatives of the volunteers mentioned in the 1937 list.

‘It would help our efforts to preserve the memory and dignity of these Brigaders if we could prove that relatives opposed this terrible project,’ says AABI President Almudena Cros.

See report in the Madrid daily El Diario.