Word: border
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...communications cut, its food supplies, gone, its ammunition exhausted, the Loyalist Army disintegrated almost overnight into a disorganized rabble. As the Rebels pressed relentlessly on, a wild churning wave of soldiers and civilians, rushing for the border, rolled before them. Veterans of Belchite, Teruel, the Ebro campaigns carried their rifles, hauled machine guns and field pieces, even drove tanks up to the frontier, where they were confiscated. They were determined not to let General Franco capture any war weapons. At one point alone 4,000 were crossing the French border every hour. At another point a Loyalist Army band played...
...less panicky was the Spanish Government in its retreat. Loyalist President Manuel Azaña passed over the border on foot. President Luis Companys of Catalonia and his government got to safety. So did President Jose Antonio de Aguirre of the now non-existent Basque Republic. Premier Dr. Juan Negrin stuck it out until the last minute, then took to a mountain pass to France. The last of his ministers were shortly on his heels...
...only at the last moment that the French Government, after debating all week what to do and after failing to persuade Generalissimo Franco to agree either to setting up a neutral zone or to declaring a general amnesty, decided to open the French border not only to the fleeing army but to as many civilians as cared to enter. Probably what helped France make up her mind was the thought of what might have happened had the frontier been kept sealed. The Loyalist Army might well have decided to make a suicidal last stand on the border. Both a massacre...
France soon made it clear that her border had been opened to a population larger than Lille's (201,000) only in the name of humanity, that the Loyalist Government would be treated as a friendly one but would not be permitted to function inside French territory. The rumors flew thick & fast that France and Britain were about to do something to prevent further bloodshed in the war. From London came a report that the British had been asked by the Loyalists to act as intermediaries. From Perpignan came a dispatch saying that President Azaña opposed further...
...cross the French border into Catalonia at one time required passage through three independent sets of custom officers-Madrid's, Catalonia's, the Anarchists'. Supplies earmarked for transit through Catalonia for the Central Government were often waylaid...