So it was...Exhibition: Between forts and trenches
Explore the numerous material traces that the Civil War left in the region
The exhibition offers a complete vision of the development of the Spanish war in Madrid and covers, with a heritage perspective, forty-three milestones of the conflict located throughout the Madrid region, which reveal the traumatic past that can be read in our daily environment.
The defense of Madrid
Madrid, Madrid! How good your name sounds,
breakwaters of all Spain!
The earth tears, the sky thunders,
you smile with lead in your gut.
This is how Machado glossed the epic and terror of the days of November, the critical days of ¡No pasaán !, when General Franco's African columns arrived at the gates of the capital and the outcome of the Civil War seemed hanging by a thread.
Franco's troops stormed the territory of the current Community of Madrid from Toledo, victorious after lifting the siege of the Alcazar, to assault the defenses of the city from the west. They were detained against all odds in the Casa de Campo and in the surroundings of the Manzanares, thanks to the popular mobilization and the resistance of the government troops. Franco managed to force the river through and partially take over the University City, but that effort meant the end of his advance. The front was stabilized in the capital and would not change broadly until March 1939, after more than two years of nerve-wracking war of position.
The urban fighting had a tragic epilogue with the Casado coup, which unleashed an internal war within the old republican capital between supporters of the surrender and those of the continuation of the resistance. The capitulation of Madrid to the Francoists was finally staged on March 28 next to the ruins of the Clinic. The war ended a few days later.
The great battles
The failure of the frontal attack against Madrid pushed the rebels to change their strategy. During the first winter of the war, Franco tried to cut Madrid's communications with the Sierra, thus dividing the republican forces defending the capital. The three successive attacks (the three battles of the La Coruña Highway) resulted in a new defensive success for the government, and the pro-Franco maneuvering mass moved to the south of the province.
There, next to the Jarama River, what many consider to be the first modern open field battle of the Civil War was fought. For twenty days the bloody struggle between the contenders for the Valencia highway unfolded, supported by numerous international volunteers and equipped with the weapons supplied by the totalitarian powers. It was increasingly evident that the war in Spain had escalated into an international conflict.
The last great battle that was fought in the surroundings of Madrid was also the bloodiest. In the fields of Brunete, under the scorching sun of July 1937, the Republic launched its first major offensive, trying to distract the attention that Franco had fixed on the weak Cantabrian strip that remained loyal to the Government. The maneuver was initially successful but soon degenerated into a battle of attrition that resulted in tens of thousands of casualties in exchange for a handful of square kilometers of no strategic value.
The General Directorate of Cultural Heritage is developing an ambitious project with which it intends to value the heritage remains related to these great battles. Several interpretation centers will be created focused on the fighting in Somosierra, the Sierra de Guadarrama, Brunete, Madrid and the Valle del Jarama. In addition, there will be other monographs on the International Brigades, women in the Civil War, the rescue of the artistic treasure, the 40-day Railroad, aviation, the Water Front ...
On the other hand, archaeological excavations are being carried out in several enclaves, which in the future will be prepared for public visits: Brunete, Colmenar del Arroyo, Parque Dehesa de Navalcarbón in Las Rozas, Los Molinos, Navalagamella, Pinto and Rivas-Vaciamadrid , among others.
The fortification of a landscape
The Madrid front was stabilized, broadly speaking, at the beginning of 1937. From the passes of Somosierra, to the north, to Algodor, to the south, the positions of both sides followed each other, forming a line of about three hundred kilometers that was gradually fortified , first with trenches and barbed wire and later with concrete fortifications, which today constitute the most spectacular visible remains of the conflict. Tens of thousands of men lived for three years in the harsh conditions imposed by modern warfare. The soldiers lived in the open, suffering from the extreme climate of the Madrid province, from the cold nights between the snow and ice of the Sierra to the exhausting summers in the areas bordering Toledo. Lice, rats, or a monotonous diet made trenches and forts unhealthy. The boredom of the front-line combatants alternated with occasional hand blows and minor attacks.
That the Madrid front remained practically unchanged until the end of the war did not mean that it was a quiet place. Points such as the Cuesta de la Reina, the Jarama bridgehead, or the ports of the Sierra were the scene of fierce attacks and local counterattacks throughout the conflict, not to mention the continuous mine warfare suffered by sectors such as La Carretera de Extremadura or, especially crudely, the Ciudad Universitaria. Those fighting did not alter the course of the war, but caused thousands of deaths. The war of positions in Madrid imposed on men an exhausting state of continuous alertness.
FIGURES OF THE CIVIL WAR HERITAGE IN THE COMMUNITY OF MADRID:
- Terms (or administrative units) reviewed: 179
- Terms with vestiges of the Civil War: 105
- Terms with no documented Civil War vestiges: 74
- Terms with defensive military structures: 82
- Terms with airfields: 12
- Terms with vestiges of the "Railroad of 40 days": 15
- Assets element tokens reviewed: 800
- Files pending inclusion in the regional inventory (2017 jobs): 130
- Unpublished enclaves detected in the review (2018): 36
- Terms with work in progress (2018): 28
- Area polygons tokens of patrimonial element: 20.000.000 m2.
- Military concrete structures listed in inventory: 450 units.
- Inventoried military structures of other materials: 1.450 units.
- Inventory sheets in which trenches are mentioned: 400 approx.
The war in the rear
Modern warfare does not limit suffering to the fronts. Long-range aviation and artillery made the rear guard at times as dangerous as the front line, even excluding the terror of repression. Madrid civilians experienced the conflict in their own flesh, and Madrid had to endure a bombing campaign that anticipated the destruction of many European capitals during World War II. Although the Republican government undertook ambitious initiatives to safeguard heritage, hundreds of historic buildings were damaged or destroyed by the revolution and the bombs. Anti-aircraft alarms and shelters became a daily thing for Madrid residents, who also suffered the rigors of living in a semi-market city. Civilians, especially women, bore the consequences of the conflict with great stoicism and self-denial. A few meters from the front, the heart of Madrid was that of a city still alive, where the queues for rationing coexisted with those that formed at the doors of the cinemas.
The civil war in the province of Madrid
The war spread over most of Madrid's territory, although with uneven intensity. In some sectors of the Sierra de Guadarrama and around the capital there was continued activity throughout the war, while other areas were far from the fronts, although they did not stop suffering the consequences of the conflict. War was always present even in the most remote places, either because of the distant noise of artillery fire, the flight of planes from both sides, or because it served as cantonment and rest places for the troops and even because of the presence of infrastructures directly linked to the war effort such as the route of the so-called 40-day railway, vital for supplying the besieged capital.
The events of those days bear witness to the numerous vestiges of fortifications that are still preserved in many parts of the region and the photographs taken during the war, which show the combatants installed in very different environments, from those located on the highest levels. from the mountains, where soldiers also had to deal with the rigors of the climate, even those found in the plains of the center and south of the province.
In the Regional Archive of the Community of Madrid and in the Joaquín Leguina Regional Library of Madrid numerous graphic documents are kept that keep the memory of that time, revealing both the great extent that the confrontation reached and the effects it had on the landscape, such as the harsh conditions in which the fighting took place and the tremendous hardships endured by the civilian population.
The fight in the city of Madrid
The city of Madrid was the primary objective of the rebels, since the triumph or failure of the rebellion would ultimately depend on their domain. The capital was the center of a strongly centralized state, where the main seats of political, military and economic power in the country were located. It also had an important symbolic value and it was estimated that its fall would cause the end of resistance in the rest of the territory.
The plans to take Madrid included the uprising of several barracks and the organization of several armed columns that had to move quickly towards the capital to provide support to the centers of the rebellion, which was finally put down in the city in the days after the rising of the day. July 18, 1936, while the rebel columns were arrested in the mountain passes of the Sierra Madrid. The capital was safe from the most immediate threat, but it quickly had to worry about the danger posed by the Army of Africa, which at the end of the same month began to transport its troops from North Africa to the Peninsula by air and very soon it would begin to advance unstoppably towards Madrid.
In the first days of October 1936, the rebels had already reached the limits of the province of Madrid, reducing the pockets of resistance that they encountered on their way. On October 21, the vanguards of these columns occupied Navalcarnero and in the following days the towns of Griñón, Brunete and Valdemoro fell into their hands. On November 6, the rebel columns reached the suburbs of the capital, taking positions in areas of Carabanchel and Villaverde. Hours later they would launch the assault on the city, which barely managed to resist the attack, remaining under siege until the end of the war.
The Fortifications Plan of the Community of Madrid
The Community of Madrid has one of the best sets of fortifications from the Civil War in the entire peninsula, which stands out for its abundance, its typological variety and its good state of conservation.
Due to this, the Community of Madrid has developed the Community of Madrid Civil War Fortifications Plan that allows documenting, protecting and preserving these remains.
The General Directorate of Cultural Heritage is also developing an ambitious project that will make it possible to value the heritage remains related to the great battles that took place in the province.
In this sense, several interpretation centers will be created around the combats of Somosierra, the Sierra de Guadarrama, Brunete, Madrid and the Jarama Valley and monographs will be elaborated on the International Brigades, the role of women in the Civil War, the rescue of the artistic treasure, the Railroad of the 40 days, the aviation or the Water Front.
Finally, archaeological excavations are being carried out in various enclaves, which in the future will be prepared for public visits: Brunete, Colmenar del Arroyo, Parque Dehesa de Navalcarbón in Las Rozas, Los Molinos, Navalagamella, Pinto and Rivas-Vaciamadrid, among others.
The book The Regional Plan of Fortifications of the Civil War (1936-1939) of the Community of Madrid represents the culmination of one of the first needs that the study of the fortifications of the Civil War demanded, the creation of a White Book that would offer the keys to how we should approach this warlike heritage of the XNUMXth century.
The work was born as an instrument to help local technicians who have to preserve and become aware that the remains of the Civil War, despite their proximity in time, are heritage vestiges of great value.
The publication is available as a free download.