Old and New Belchite

Sunday 14 September

On the doorway of  St Martins' church in Belchite one of the last inhabitants wrote a touching farewell message : "Village of old Belchite, you will no longer hear children playing and singing, or  the traditional jota dances of our fathers". Its people were moved to the new Belchite in 1954, and the ruins left as a monument to the fallen Catholic martyrs on his side, a propaganda tool which children would brought to see.

Belchite was a name familiar to our family for many years as the place where our uncle Sidney Shosteck died. We made up our stories based on the few scraps left to us; a newspaper article, a few pages of diary, a letter. We made assumptions which we had to discard: Sidney buried in the olive press; leaving roses at the town fountain. We imagined a scenario where Sidney walked through the town gate, following a tank, and was shot from the church tower.

Now we learned that the Lincoln Battalion approached the fascist holdout in the church from the opposite side of town. We saw the building used first as a hospital, then as  the Falangist headquarters. This was where a fascist prisoner was leading a tank, followed by Sidney, when he was shot in the head from a high vantage point. It was clear that this must have been either the clock tower, or one of the buildings near it.

One of the archaeology team pointed out the house from which his family had been removed to the new Belchite, in the 1960's. Old Belchite had been a settlement from Roman times, where Jews, Muslims and Christians lived together . It is so ironic that Franco was unable to succeed without involving the very people he wanted to remove from Spain.

As we went out the gate we met an Aragon fiesta party with women in traditional dress. It seemed an odd place to celebrate. A man asked us, "where are you from?"
-"Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales.".
He said emphatically, "NO, United Kingdom!"
Clearly he was strongly against the devolved powers and regional identity which threatened  Madrid's centralized control.  We have had many discussions amongst ourselves about this, as Scotland's referendum about independence will be held this Thursday.


 Interesting layers of graffiti - fascist, Anarchist, for Aragonese independence-on the walls  of the abandoned city showed the politics of the Civil War was still a burning issue.

The programme of  talks, and the various perspectives of the volunteeers  coming from diverse cultures and political angles, have provoked many stimulating ideas. Francisco Fernandez considered the effect of  war on contemporary society; the mass graves created not by war, but repression; counting some victims, and not others. The process of grieving was allowed f Nationalists but not Republicans, and  even today is a contentious issue. The poignant photo of Maria throwing flowers from  the side of the highway built over where her father died showed the continuing pain of loss.

General Franco declared he was "building a new Spain on the bodies of the fallen". He meant, only the winning side.  The fear created by decades of oppression is still felt over the issue of exhumations of Republican dead, which are not officially recognised. The bereaved often had to create rituals when these mass graves from the Civil War and after, were finally uncovered.  Only in the past decade could this digging for historical truth have occured.

-First impressions of the project:
Volunteers and professional archeologists are staying at two Spanish Tourist board hostels. Almost 35 years after the dictator's death in 1975 , his traces remain; in the name of the street, Franco Street; in the Falangist symbol adorning a wall. The 12 volunteers come from
Ireland, Wales, Scotland, England, the US and Canada: a diverse group coming to the project from many different angles.

 Saturday, 13 Sept:

We drove into the dusty hills to search out the evidence  left  by the British Battalion who had dug trenches here to stave off an advance.  In this arid isolated spot we were asked to imagine the barbed wire, the deep trenches, the mortar rounds . All over the hillside were bullets and metal objects on the ground or just below, traces of a few days of combat.  

Below the hill, was a Popaloo dry toilet, and a canopy for respite from the fierce sun . We followed a path up through thorny bushes to the top of the spur of hill  which gave an amazing view  of the countryside. Our job was to search with a metal detector. When it beeped,  we would scrape the surface to find German bullets fired from a mile away, bits of wire, pieces of metal ammunition boxes.. The trained archaeologists could see small anomalies on the hillside, which were then marked with a colored stick,. But in a short time, we could begin to sees objects lying on the ground.

After a break of crusty bread and lovely tomatoes, salami and fruit,  the positions of the finds we had marked were recorded calling out to a staffer with a transom on the next hill. Elaine was astonished at the detail of data: identifying each tiny piece of metal, each twist of wire... and giving it a number and location. Meanwhile Wendy was sweating at the top of the hill , cheerfully shoveling,carefully scraping in a trench, volunteers calling out for an identification when they found something they hoped was of interest.

Elaine was amazed that such seemingly unimportant objects could tell archaeologists a story: Russian bullets from 1917, German machine gun casings, a jug, ammunition boxes and unexploded mortars.

Through repetitive work in the sun and dust  personal and national histories are uncovered.
An International Brigader from Wales, Alun Menai Williams , was asked: What was Spain like?
 He replied , "I can't tell you- I only know the taste of the soil when you have your nose six inches from the ground, crawling".    But modern scientific techniques help put all the little pieces  together for a view a little
further off the ground.

Wendy & Elaine check the map the night before

http://merrimandiary.com/category/belchite/
Alan Warren has kindly sent this link to Bob Merriman's diary of 1937, with a description of Belchite and Sidney Shosteck's death there.

ONE WEEK TO GO!

On this dig in Belchite, we hope to recover some of the story of our mother's brother, Sidney Shosteck,who died there in 1937. Memories of the Spanish Civil War have been buried both in Spain and our family.