The Trip and the Reception

Before the Non-Intervention Pact came into force crossing the Span-
ish border was not a very difficult task. Here is a description, by a Brit-
ish Volunteer of the experiences of one of the earliest groups to arrive 
in Spain.

We were making the last few miles of our journey through France
in a motor coach. The mountain road we were taking was winding its
way through scenery of grandeur and beauty. We all had an apprecia-
tion of beauty, yet few of us were paying much attention to that through
which we were passing. Our thoughts raced ahead to the borders of 
Spain, which we knew must be near.
Soon we were there. Border guards stopped our coach and five 
minutes afterwards, we were in Spain. Eagerly we looked through 
the windows. The small village became alive as we passed through it. 
Laughing women with children in their arms, men with a welcoming 
smile, came out of their homes, or stopped in their walk to hold up 
a clenched fist and call “Salud”. Children ran from their play to 
mount the stones at the side of the road and hold up their small fists 
in welcome too. 
We spent the night at an immense mediaeval fortress, which 
commanded the country for miles around. It was here that thousands 
of the Asturian miners spent long months of imprisonment and tor- 
ture after their defeat in 1934, until they were released by the coming 
of the Popular Front Government. The following morning, we were 
up early and many of us went up on to the ramparts of the fortress 
to look over the country around us. Far away, through the crisp 
morning air, we could see the white capped mountains standing clear 
against the intense blue of the sky. A scene of great majesty. To most 
of us, who had never before left England, it was a scene before 
which we could only stand silent and awed. 
After breakfast, we marched down to the station. With us were 
five or six hundred men who had been gathering in the town in the 
previous days. Men of every nationality under the sun. All actua- 

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