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Try to imagine that the city of Malaga is to be evacuated overnight. 150.000 people will have to walk 200km along the N340 in search of a safe refuge whilst being pursued by Italian tanks, bombed by German aircraft and shelled by Rebel Nationalist ships. Men and women shot by planes or killed by blasts from the boats following them off-shore will be left at the roadside, innocent children abandoned to the chaos and inhumanity of adults at war. There will be little food, transport or fresh water. Nourished only by hope and driven by fear, exposed to the elements and to enemy fire, they will walk through the day and through the night. Many will be too weak to reach the safe port of Almería and survive only because a Canadian doctor comes to help. A doctor who will later be accused of spying and betrayal and will be unwillingly pushed out of Spain by the very people he had come to assist.
Try to imagine such a scenario and you would be forgiven for believing it to be a work of fiction. But alas, in the recent annals of Iberian history the story exists, forgotten by all but a few. It is as story of bravery and betrayal, dogmatism and defeat. It is the story of Norman Bethune and the Exodus from Malaga.





Only foreigners wore ties
In the general election of 1936, the Popular front (centre and left) won against the National Front (centre and right). Overnight villages and towns either planned an uprising against the new government, or euphorically began to initiate radical changes. In Malaga, the old symbols of inequality disappeared. It was a time for new customs, new attitudes and even a new dress code. The Manchester Guardian reported that in the new radical atmosphere of Malaga in those early post-electoral days, “only foreigners now wore ties”. Unfortunately, the absence of ties did little to prevent the military uprising and the country was thrown into a sudden and brutal civil war.

Malaga bites back
The Military garrison in Malaga tried to take control of the city, but the broadly Republican malagueños resisted and after a few minor scuffles and exchange of fire, the garrison retreated to its barracks under supervision. However, Malaga’s brave spirit soon began to attract the interest of Franco who needed access to this strategically important port town. He arranged for Italian troops, arriving via Cadiz, to begin the offensive against the southern provinces of Republican Spain. In response to this threat, the Republican Government sent Colonel Villalba to organise the defence of the city. But it was too little and far too late. By the beginning of February 1937, the Italians had reached the outskirts of Malaga, and backed up by divisions of Franco’s army, swiftly took control of the city.

They did not come
Arthur Koestler wrote of the Malaga defeat in his book ‘Spanish Testament’ that: “the rebel cruisers bombarded us and the ships of the Republic did not come. The rebel 'planes sowed panic and destruction, and the 'planes of the Republic did not come. The rebels had artillery, armored cars and tanks, and the arms and war material of the Republic did not come.”

Malaga’s spirited but ineffective defense collapsed before the professional armies that were grouped on its outskirts. The republic had indeed let down the Andalusian city. On the eve of the occupation, Colonel Villalba’s only comment was “the situation is a critical one, but Malaga will put up a good fight”. But without support and organized defenses Republican malagueños knew their city would fall and that massive reprisals and executions would follow, as had occurred in other Spanish towns. And indeed over 4.000 executions would take place in the city after occupation. Terrified, isolated and forgotten, malagueños knew that there remained only one solution - to flee; one exit - the coastal road; and one hope - to reach the safety of Almería.

La caravana de la muerte
Today, accounts of the exodus are few. Survivors remember it as the “caravan of death”. They survived on sugar cane, oranges and the blind hope that they would reach safe ground in the republican city of Almería before the Italian troops caught up with them. On and on they walked. Many fell victim to the endless rounds of ammunition from the airplanes flying a few metres above their heads or the shells targeting them from just out at sea. Some, too tired to keep up, fell to the back and remember the tanks finally catching up with them. They hid and watched. The true horror slowly dawning on them that they would now be forced to return to the occupied city and face the violent repercussions as defeated refugees.

The Ambulance arrives
Unbeknown to the malagueños in flight, the civil war was developing on other fronts. The International Brigades were recruiting volunteers from across the world, and people like Laurie Lee, George Orwell and Jack Jones were arriving to help defend the Spanish Republic. In Canada 1.600 volunteers came to join in the “defence of democracy”. One of these was a radical and charismatic doctor called Norman Bethune. Bethune came because as a doctor, he believed that poverty was the main cause of ill health. He saw in the Spanish republic a brave and classical struggle against poverty and so came to Madrid in November 1936 to co-ordinate and organise the medical help sent by the Canadian government. During this time in Madrid, he brilliantly organised the first ever mobile health unit that contained dressings for 500 wounds, and enough supplies and medicine for 100 operations. It would also carry crucial blood donations to the front lines.
As a foreigner in a strange city, Bethune did things his own way. He would make maps to help him re-find locations; he met and had a passionate affair with a
Swedish, blond journalist; he got drunk and criticised officials that tried to tell him how to do his job. These events and incidents would have repercussions. After Madrid, Bethune drove up to Barcelona with his work companions: Hazen Size and Thomas Worsley. Stocked up with an ambulance full off donated blood he headed south to Malaga in the hope of arriving at the city before it fell to Nationalist troops.


The end of the line
As the ambulance passed Almería and onto the coastal road to Málaga, the three companions came across the front of the procession: small compact groups of children and adults, mules and goats. Many children had no footwear and were crying in pain with swollen blistered feet.




Then, as they drove further on, they suddenly came across the bulk of the procession. A serpentine line that filled the whole width of the road and continued as far as the eye could see – at least 30 kilometres of endless bodies dragging themselves ever onwards. So compact were they that they trod on each other’s feet as they walked. The ambulance stopped. The only sound Bethune could hear as the procession wound its way past was that of esparto sandals trudging wearingly over pebbles and stones, of exhausted breathing or the wailing of starving infants. These people had been walking 5 days and nights without a break. Towards the end of the line were the remains of the military defenders in retreat. They were a small and disparate group, armed with only rifles against the attacking planes and boats. They wore torn and ragged uniforms and expressions of fatigue and defeat. They warned Bethune that Malaga had fallen, that even Motril had been taken and the Italians were close behind.
Bethune and Size decided to return to Almería. They emptied the ambulance of
everything to make passenger space, cramming in 30 to 40 people per trip. At first they tried to prioritise the abandoned children the elderly, the weak and the sick. Then they just took everyone they could in the rush to get them all to safety. With just bread and oranges for sustenance, the ambulance crew worked for four days and four nights without a break, back and forth to Almería and then returning to the “caravana de la muerte”.


Almería
As the bulk of the procession arrived in Almería and the population of the city doubled with the number of the refugees, the long feared bombing of the city began again. It was evident that the planes this time were not targeting the port or the military barracks, but instead the newly arrived refugee population. Just as they thought they had found sanctuary, they were targeted once again. The bombs fell everywhere, residential barrios, commercial centres and wherever the refugees tried to hide. For the exhausted travellers the nightmare wasn’t over. The civil war would carry on in this fashion for another two years.

“A scar on my heart”
The Malaga exodus, the Almería bombings and the heroic role of Norman Bethune and his companions have combined to become one of the great forgotten stories of the civil war. Ardently refuted by the political right in Spain, whilst commemorated by the left, the incident remains diplomatically forgotten by all but a few survivors. Records released later from the Soviet Union about the role of Norman Bethune, have confused the issue further. According these Archives Bethune was effectively removed from Spain by the then, influential Communist Party who insisted that the Republican Government purge him for his “immorality, drunkenness, money squandering and passing on of frontline maps to a fascist spy.”
This so-called fascist spy was none other than his Swedish lover, who as a journalist had access to his road maps. But she seemed an unlikely candidate to be passing on secrets to fascist forces, for after the war, she fled from Franco’s Spain to live in Mexico with other republican refugees, and to die there 30 years later. Mexico was the only country other than the Soviet Union to recognise, support and give homes to republican refugees.
George Orwell wrote in 1937 in the New English Weekly that:
“In Spain, everyone whose opinions are to the left of those of the Communist Party, is sooner or later discovered to be a Trotskyist, or at least a traitor.” Thus Bethune too, opinionated and anti-bureaucratic came under suspicion as a traitor and in May 1937, when the military medical forces in Republican Spain were organized into a government bureaucracy, Bethune disillusioned left the country, saying that Spain would always be: ”a scar on my heart”.
After a short period back in Canada he left for China to organize his mobile blood unit for Mao Tse Tung. He died there, just a year later, from a cut to his hand whilst operating on a wounded soldier. Without the drugs to stop the infection at hand, blood poisoning set in, his whole body became infected and he died. But his contribution to this day is remembered by the whole country as Mao wrote in his tribute to Bethune: “No one who returned from the front failed to express admiration for Bethune whenever his name was mentioned, and none remained unmoved by his spirit”.

Unspoken memories
In Spain however, apart from one street in Malaga bearing his name, Bethune and the Malaga Exodus are all but forgotten. But then so to is the history of how the war began. A survey published in El País
in November 2005 about Franco and the civil war found that of those questioned about the 1936 Military uprising, 45% didn’t believe that the Popular Front government was a legitimate one, or were not sure whether it was or just could not say. This makes shocking reading. The 1936 election had a nine million turnout. The Popular Front won by a 150.000 majority. Defeated at the ballot box the political right conspired to take control of the country by military means. Perhaps 150.000 does not make an overall majority, but then neither was the 527 vote majority that Bush won over Al Gore in 2000, and no one suggested that a civil war would best resolve the differences.
As Santayana said: those that cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. For this reason, the relatives of the Malaga Exodus and all those families of forgotten Republican soldiers have and are, still fighting to be remembered. And until they are, we shall all, like Bethune, be carrying scars on our hearts.

© Paul Read