Musings on my life in Spain

San Isidro de Albatera is a small town not unlike many other small towns you may drive through in this part of Spain. In reality there’s not a lot there to cause you to stop off, but it does hold a dark and somewhat forgotten secret.

Around the train station there have been many changes as they prepare for the AVE line to pass through. This has enabled the town’s dark secret to be hidden even deeper than before. To get there from the town itself now takes a rather torturous route along main thoroughfares and over a busy road bridge.

Actually, torturous is quite an inappropriate adjective to use. Why? Well, the dark secret comes from the Spanish Civil War. In 1937 a labour camp was established where prisoners were put to work. By 1939 this had developed into a full-on concentration camp where it is estimated 25,000 people died. Looking out over the fields today it is hard to contemplate the horrors which occurred at this location.

In 1995 survivors of the camp put up a memorial. It has survived the station’s upgrade but is now completely cut off from the town. Two iron beams stand pointing skywards with gruesome broken chains resembling barbed wire wrapped around their upper reaches. The plaque at the bottom merely hints at what happened here. The municipal website offers a more in-depth history of the encampment but, as usual, Google doesn’t translate it very well if you choose the English version!

The fight still continues for recognition of this site as a mass grave. When a map of known sites was published in 2011, San Isidro was not on it despite being one of the largest in the entire country. The Commission for Historical Memory are still demanding to know why.

Many thanks to two English language reports about this site from Geoff Martin – Civil War on the Costa Blanca and Spain’s past Casts a Sinister Shadow. Without them, I wouldn’t have known anything about this moving memorial.

If you have enjoyed my post, perhaps you'd like to take a closer look at my ongoing blog about places to see in Spain, www.anythingbutpaella.com