Memorial tablet found along a side road, Mirador de las Tres Huegas
Martha Bridegam writes: The Mirador de las Tres Huegas is actually a hilltop observation point (a French site has photos of it here), reached by a short gravel road that runs up the crest of a ridge from the highest point of the Alcubierre-Zaragoza highway. The hilltop "mirador" now has a paved platform with parapet, a large cross, and much imperfectly-painted-out political graffiti, but no official inscription we could find. From the highway turnoff you can also follow a second gravel road along the western (Zaragoza) flank of the ridge. My husband and I found this stone tablet along the lower road, sitting by itself under an eroded part of the hill. The tablet's strange placement invites speculation: did someone take it down from the formal hilltop site? If so, officially or unofficially? Was it discarded along the lower road but then respectfully set upright by someone else? As for the tablet itself, the image in the bottom right corner may be a Papal cross; we haven't yet identified the image at the upper right. The text sounds like a postwar Spanish idea of evenhandedness: "Here, with a heroic cry, were silenced many voices that clamored for the fatherland, for bread, and for justice."
October 2005 Update
Bill Sinclair, a scholar of La Guerra Civil/Revolución Español and Orwell enthusiast, has sent in these e-mail comments about the tablet photo:
In 1995 I received a research and travel award from the (UK) Arts Council to visit Orwell sites in Aragón and Catalunya including Alcubierre. I now live in Barcelona not so very far from the site of the former cavalry barracks commandeered by the POUM militia and re-named the Lenin Barracks where Orwell was quartered prior to being transported to the Aragón front. Martha Bridegam writes: The Mirador de las Tres Huegas...... Was it discarded along the lower road but then respectfully set upright by someone else? As for the tablet itself, the image in the bottom right corner may be a Papal cross; *we haven't yet identified the image at the upper right*. The image alluded to *is* the symbol of the Falange (yes, they still exist. Based on a similar design as used by the Italian Fascisti - which itself was based on designs used in the senate of Ancient Rome to denote the bundle of sticks as used by speakers in the Senate ) After the Civil War (during which Franco artfully neutralised potential Falange opposition to his rule through incorporating the Falange into a national political movement) the symbol was adapted and adopted by the Spanish State. The use of the symbol here indicates that the memorial tablet here was erected to mark the "heroism" of the Francoist forces, and not, as Martha Bridgeam (understandably) posits, " a postwar Spanish idea of evenhandedness: " Tragically, the concept did not exist in Spain between 1939 and 1975. And, even today, is in short supply in some areas of Spanish (& Catalan) civic life. The real tragedy is that the memorial tablet was more than likely carved by a Republican, or suspected Republican, or even suspected /potential/ Republican sympathiser, prisoner serving an indefinite period of incarceration with the ever present prospect of summary execution.
