Arcadia Spain

This field study of the History course is a one day excursion to the Spanish-French border town of La Jonquera and its Exile Memorial Museum (MUME) and the sea-side village of Colliure on the French side of the Spanish-French border.

The Spanish Civil War was one of the most important chapters of Spanish contemporary history or Spanish history in general. A chapter which until today has an important impact on Spanish society as it is today, on Spanish day-by-day politics and Spanish people's lifes.

With the visit to the museum at La Jonquera, lying on the main route of the Spanish refugees who had to flee the country faced with the persecution by the advancing troops of the new dictator Francisco Franco in 1939, the students get a deep inside into the drama of human exile produced by political persecution and oppression. They also learn impacting facts about what the end of the Civil War and the newly established dictatorship meant to those who had defended the ideas of freedom and equality. A weight they had to carry for 37 years more if they did not end up in Nazi concentration camps during the occupation of France by Hitler. It is a type of hands-on-approach on the fate of over 500000 people who had to flee the persecution of a dictatorial regime which put them before the choice of meeting the firing squat or leaving their beloved ones and their homes. The museum itself boosts a very modern and well made exhibition on this topic which not only explains the fate of the refugees and their exile but also the connections to the German concentration camps, to the international ideological conflict which led to the war and the persecutions and finally to the fate, explained in first person, of those who choose to never come back to Spain. But also the setting of the museum in the very same place where the exodus of thousands of Spaniards did take place in 1939, a very dry and, in winter, hostile landscape  underlines what it meant to live all this. During this semester's tour even the very cold and windy weather conditions helped to imagine the hardship of the people

The excursion is rounded-up by a visit to an olden sea-side village on the Mediterranean coast, Colliure, just a few miles north of the French-Spanish border.

It brings the students to a place where the first part of the exodus ended for many Spaniards. The contrast between the harsh historic events and the today nice, lovely and calm Mediterranean village gives this part of the trip a special meaning. Specially the visit to the tomb of Antonio Machado, one of the famous victims of this exile, on the cemetery of Colliure, impresses most students, especially when they notice the huge amount of fresh flowers on the tomb which show clearly that this chapter of Spanish history - now nearly 80 years ago - has still not been closed.

Besides, it is culturally a very interesting place as it mixes French and Catalan heritage and culture, being part of the Roussillon region which had been till the 17th century part of Catalonia (with Barcelona as its capital) and from then on part of France. Because of these historical facts the town, on the one hand,  has been politically separated from the main body of the Catalan people and has become more and more French influenced. On the other hand was the town  from the start on part of what we would call the Western alliance during the Cold War and as such part of a Western style democracy (France) and had not to suffer the political and cultural persecution as their Catalan cousins on the other side of the border.