Speaker Ian Black - Voyage of a Lifetime

At the Meeting of St Andrews Kilrymont Rotary Club on 18th October, Dr Ian Black spoke about his recent trip of Central Spain and the insight it has given him into the Struggle for Democracy in the Spanish Civil War.  Ian also referred members to the excellent archive of the 33 men from Fife who went to Spain to fight.  The men were mainly unemployed miners, some of them with families and their written accounts are held in the Methil Heritage Centre.  Ian's interest in the subject had started when he read the story of "The Unsung Hero from Buckhaven".

 

The small group of travellers Ian joined, visited areas off the usual tourist route and combined history with gastronomy, staying in local privately owned hotels and escorted by their own tour guide and driver.  They were told about 600 years of Roman occupation followed by 300 years of Moorish conquest at their first stop, Albarracion, a remote town in the south west of Spain which is destined to be a World Heritage site by virtue of the original Moorish walls.  The resident population of Albarracion has steadily declined to 40 people.   From Albarracion they went to Aragon which is mostly desert and underpopulated but is where some of the fiercest battles of the Spanish Civil War took place after the Facist Headquarters moved from Madrid to Vallencia.  The group stayed in Teruel, a village which was largely destroyed in the Civil War, but where the Moorish towers have been reconstructed to their original design.  The village is at a height of 3000 ft and has a lovely Cathedral, which has the widest nave in Europe.  It is here that they saw the shrine to The Lovers - King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella whose marriage united Castille and Aragon and whose story is believed to have given Shakespeare the idea for Romeo and Juliet.  The final stop was in the village of Calazeite on the Mediterranean a place of architectural beauty as well as gastronomic delights.

The particular associations of this area with Spanish Civil War connected with stories of the men from Fife.   One of the men wrote an account of his horror as he watched three planes bomb a local village and he described one of the major offensives of the New People's Army.  The young man realised that "War is about killing people" - as his idealism changed to realism.  Of the 33 men, 17 died.  One man returned home injured only to go back to the fighting in Spain.  There is another account by a man who was held prisoner, tortured and deprived until he was finally escorted back through France. 

In finishing Ian compared the complexity of the Spanish Civil War with the current situation in the Middle East.

Wilda Mackinnon on behalf of the club thanked Ian for his informative talk and for highlighting such an interesting local connection.