One Ship Lost, Many Lives Remembered: The MV Ciudad de Barcelona
In Part Six of Home So Far Away, Klara is accompanying two patients from Base Headquarters in Albacete, Castilla La Mancha, to the rehabilitation hospital in Benissa, Alicante, on the Mediterranean coast. It is June, 1937. Their vehicle, donated to the Spanish Republic by an anti-fascist organization, is ably steered by Ernst Liefmann, a young volunteer from Hamburg. Klara strikes up a conversation with the injured passengers, Bernard and David, and is surprised to learn that they are both survivors of the torpedoing of the motorship Ciudad de Barcelona, sunk on May 30th. Her surprise stems from the reports she had read in Spanish newspapers that the ship was carrying food and equipment, little more.
But Bernard and David revealed that they were among over two hundred international volunteers making their way to Spain from Marseille, in utmost secrecy. The restrictions of the Non-Intervention Agreement had sealed the border with France. The ship was sailing toward Barcelona, just about 400 meters off the beach of the fishing village of Malgrat de Mar when a torpedo launched by an Italian-owned submarine, the General Sanjurjo, slammed into the ship’s engine room and immediately exploded. The ship broke apart and went down within a couple of minutes. Survivors reported hearing volunteers trapped below the deck singing the “Internationale” as the sea rose to take them down.
David was thrown overboard and nearly drowned, aspirating seawater and sand that affected his breathing for life. He was rowed to shore by the fisherfolk of the village, while Bernard (who could not swim) was also thrown through the air and miraculously landed on a piece of floating wood and was rescued hours later by a loyalist hydroplane.
General Franco’s fascist regime imposed its law of forgetting on the people of Spain. From 1939 on, memory of the sinking was repressed. But this coming May 27-30, the heroic survivors of the Ciudad de Barcelona and those whose names we may never know will be remembered at the site where the people of Malgrat de Mar rescued with rafts, blankets, and ample cognac the few who survived the incident. The site will now be named Solidarity Park and the shores of Malgrat will host a monument dedicated to the brigaders who would give their lives to combat fascism, 85 years later. Music, art exhibitions, visits from brigaders’ relatives, and countless other attractions, all spearheaded by English sculptor, Rob MacDonald, promise to reclaim the memory of the place and the event that fascism wished us all to forget. See this page for updates on the festival: https://solidaritypark.com/2022/04/08/solidarity-park-inauguration-and-festival-2022
And see my May 1 message commemorating the anniversary and the Solidarity Park Festival:
Rob MacDonald at work on a relief map.