By Editorial Côté Brest
Published on
5 May 24 at 9:20
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On April 12, 2024, the presentation of an opus on the exiled Spanish Republicans made it possible to retrace the journey of four of them, who spent time in Brest.
April 12 was a symbolic date since it was on this day, in 1931, that the elections took place in Spain which led to the advent of the republican regime brought down eight years later by Franco’s coup d’état.
The exiled Spanish Republicans were not all sent to Brest and those who went there did not all stay, but there were a certain number of them who made their roots there, making their journey accessible thanks to their descendants.
Unwanted victims
Lucas Allende Santa Cruz experienced the camps in the South of France before being delivered to the Germans who sent him to Brest, where he worked for the NSKK which was responsible for transporting troops, equipment and ammunition for the army of the Reich. He escaped and entered the Resistance but his group was denounced.
Deported to Dachau, he was unable to leave after the Liberation, as no country wanted to welcome the “red” Spaniards! It took the efforts of Edmond Michelet so that these unloved deportees, including Lucas, could return to France.
A historical work
The MERE 29 association works to bring to life the memory of the Spanish Republicans exiled in Finistère: it collaborates closely with researchers from UBO, which has given rise, to date, to three conferences in Brest. The latest one resulted in a publication available in bookstores since April 11, a double issue of the Cermi magazine (Center for Studies and Research on Iberian Migration) entitled Forced Labor of Spanish Republicans during the Second World War and bringing together texts due, in large part, to Brest authors.
Edited by Iván López Cabello and Geneviève Dreyfus-Armand, the work covers three aspects of the subject. Indeed, this forced labor was not limited to the work that the German army imposed on the Spaniards delivered by Vichy France: before the debacle of 1940, the Third Republic already sent these exiles to work, including one large number on the Maginot line, which meant they were the first deportees from the territory
French.
On the other hand, not all the Republicans left Spain after their defeat and the Franco dictatorship did not fail to reduce them to slavery. It is therefore this triple painful subject which is treated through historical articles and testimonies.
A camp in the Keroual woods!
Eduardo Caro Bermudo rebelled against the French authorities of the camp where he had been interned, which resulted in him being sent to the disciplinary camp of Collioure. He worked in an aircraft factory where he had to destroy what he had built when the Germans invaded the South of France. He knew several Brest internment places, including the Keroual wood camp of which nothing is known. He escaped several times and, during one of his escapes, he met a Breton woman with whom he would have… fourteen children! To be continued…
Benoît Quinquis
Source: conference delivered on April 12 at the Brest university library of letters and human sciences.
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