Two Deserted Villages
The depopulation of rural areas is usually due to the search of work and better living conditions. It was a constant after the industrial revolution, but in these two cases, Belchite and Jánovas, in Spain, the reasons were completely different but they got common elements: the civil war and human greed.
It is Monday, September 6, 1937. The Republican commander of the 25th Division, Miguel Garcia Vivancos, along Commissar Antonio Ejarque, watch through periscopic binoculars the movements of rebel troops leaving their positions in the besieged Belchite. They just end up taking over the town, but it has been a Pyrrhic victory. The conquest has prevented them from taking Zaragoza, the main target, and the Aragon front has stalled without obtaining any serious advantage.
One day before Mikhail Koltsov, the Soviet newspaper Pravda correspondent wrote: Yesterday, at five in the afternoon, the fascist resistance was finally broken. Among the rubble of houses sound, increasingly isolated shots... Prisoners pass: an official priest with the revolver in his belt, a group of Moors... Belchite has been taken. This victory, small but laborious, has given encouragement to the Republican troops.
The unfortunate fate of Belchite was written the day a military official from northwest Spain betrayed his government raising the army against the legality established by votes, but more specifically when the Republican military leadership tried to recover the Aragonese towns held by the rebels. The offensive launched on the Aragon front also intended to relieve the pressure under the northern provinces, still loyal but isolated behind the enemy lines. Belchite resistance slowed the Republican advance and allowed the strengthening of rebel troops.
Tuesday 24 Lieutenant Colonel Enrique San Martin and his troops, regular soldiers, requetés, Falangists and some armed civilians watched the Republican divisions, among which was the 11th of Enrique Lister and the International Brigades: the 45th of Kleber and 35th surrounding the town. This latter was directed by a Polish military, Karol Świerczewski Waclaw, General Walter who the inevitably Ernest Hemingway transformed in General Golz character in his book For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Between Friday and Saturday come and get Republicans, backed by tanks, coming in from Main Street, taking it house by house. In thirteen days Belchite has been devastated. Less than a year later, on March 10, the fascist troops would take over again the town.
Miguel García Vivancos would continue the fight on Teruel front and would be wounded in the arm the following year. After the war he would go on to France where he was interned for four years in two camps. He ended up living in Paris becoming a naif painter. He died in Cordoba in January 1972 on holidays. Antonio Ejarque also lived in Paris as a delegate of the National Committee of the CNT until 1950 when he died sick at the Hospital de Dieu. Karol Świerczewski, General Walter, in addition to being immortalized by Hemingway, continued fighting as Soviet officer during World War II, once finished he became defence minister of the Polish government until he was killed in an ambush by Ukrainian nationalists in March 1947.
And Belchite, Belchite Old Town as it is now called, was ruined and empty. After the war the Franco government made promises announcing the imminent reconstruction and providing irrigation from the Ebro waters, just twenty miles away. There were those who returned to inhabit their dwellings, albeit in precarious conditions, in fact, even a new two-storey building at the corner of Main Street with the Plaza Nueva was built. But instead of promises came republican prisoners forced to build a new town, the new Belchite that would be inaugurated in 1954. Ten years later was forced the eviction and relocation of the few residents remaining in the old core. Someone thought the fascist resistance deserved homage to preserve the disastrous state of the town. Anyway they caused further damage the long years that the old town was exposed to the plundering of building materials, abandonment and vandalism.
Old Belchite has now been closed allowing just guided visits through the Arco de la Villa, Town’s Archway, Mudejar baroque tower, which was one of three former entrances, this leading to Main Street. Walking along on it, at left hand is the Plaza del Convento and the church and the Convent of St. Augustine, who belonged to the Augustinian Hermits probably since the thirteenth century. After the nineteenth century confiscation the church remained open and even after the Civil War battle it continued officiating until 1964 when masses were officiated permanently in new Belchite.
Returning to Main Street soon is reached the Plaza Nueva, last fascist stronghold, between this and the old square stands the Clock Tower, which actually were the church of San Juan and later the coffee theatre Pampas. Now it is only a wall and the tower that has been restored but vandalism has left without stairs. Main Street continues until Church Square where there are, almost together, the San Rafael Abbey and San Martin de Tours church. The latter was the town main parish, built in the first half of the fourteenth century in Moorish and Gothic style with a bell tower that recalls a Muslim minaret. On the door one of its last inhabitants, Natalio Baquero, wrote on his departure: Pueblo viejo de Belchite, ya no te rondan zagales, ya no se oirán las jotas que cantaban nuestros padres. (Old Town of Belchite, no longer haunt you teenagers, neither the songs sung by our parents will be heard.)
Jánovas was a small town near Boltaña in Huesca, by Ara River waterfront. It had the misfortune to focus the interests of an electric power company, Iberduero, who saw the possibility of making money with the construction of a dam in the area. On 14 April 1951 it took over the project that would have to flood the town and other nearby: Lavelilla, Lacort, Albella, Ligüerre Ara, Javierre de Ara, Santa Olaria y Burgasé. In early 1960 expropriations began while the power company start pushing the inhabitants razing orchards, fields and ditches, cutting off the supply of water and electricity. Leading to unimaginable extremes violence against them, dynamiting empty homes without notice them in advance neither taking safety cautions, even kicking off students from school. In 1984, already in democracy, the town were completely evicted without the dam work had any hint of activity. Fifty years after the project was determined not viable economically was dismissed 2005. Three years later 115 of the 150 families initially involved were informed about the start of the reversion process by which abusively, the administration asked them to return the amount received as compensation to their present value, regardless they had surrendered homes in condition and administration were giving back just ruins and regardless by the damage caused along more than sixty years. The contempt that has been needlessly inflicted to the residents of Jánovas by the power companies and the administration simply had no name. Now there are only the empty streets where weeds grew and the walls of the houses, as its inhabitants are reluctant to leave.
© J.L.Nicolas
