This is our final talk of this season before the summer break. David Ebsworth, one of our regular presenters and civil war expert, now takes us on one of Franco’s real-life 1938 battlefield tours. Join him – and 1930s Coventry school-teacher Mary Walker, an ardent supporter of General Franco – as we meet some of their actual fellow-travellers, hear from the tour guides, encounter a few new heroes and villains, visit some of the astonishing sites and works of art along the routes and the coastal Camino, and reveal completely new secrets of history’s most audacious propaganda exercise.
In 1938, General Franco’s Nationalist forces launched “National War Routes,” guided tours of battlefields in areas they had recently occupied. These tours, like the “War Route of the North,” were state-sanctioned propaganda efforts aimed at legitimizing the Nationalist regime and showcasing their dominance over the Republicans. The tours, which began in July 1938 and continued until the end of World War II, were estimated to have drawn between 6,670 and 20,010 participants, mostly foreigners.
David has done other great talks to Javea U3A on the Spanish Civil War, and this will not be an exception
Tuesday 10th June 10.30am for 11.00 start
Javea Players Studio, Javea Players Studio, Carrer del Cronista Figueras Pacheco, 6, 03730 Xàbia, Alacant
All U3A members welcome. No need to book, just come along!
