In 1939, along with the mass exile called “Withdrawal”, numerous militiamen and ex-combatants who wanted to escape from Franco’s claws crossed the Pyrenean border, but when they reached the other side they were disarmed by the French authorities. Military logic said that in the French State that group of people could not enter armed. On the other hand, what solidarity logic was behind the reception of 170,000 people in captivity, first on the beaches of Roussillon and later on in closed areas of several departments?

Unfortunately, after the defeat of the war in the Spanish State, the Fugitives could expect such a strange welcome in France from the Popular Front, which ruled. They knew it well, because since the beginning of the war in 1936 this left-wing coalition had behaved as weird as stupid with the Spanish Republic. Lehendakari Leon Blum, despite being a socialist, leaned in August 1936 against the “policy of non-participation”, to the detriment of the Spanish Republic. And during the 1939 Withdrawal, Edouard Daladier, who led the French Government, behaved much worse against the refugees. On the one hand, it launched several laws to punish all suspects who came into the Indesirables or “undesirable” section: they returned to their territories or kept them in places of detention. On the other hand, Daladier, through León Berard, had long been in contact with Franco to pay tribute to his government, turning his back on the Republicans.

On 28 February 1939, Philippe Petain was sent to Burgos as French ambassador – the same day that Manuel Azaña left the presidency of the Second Spanish Republic in exile. Thus, the two sides closed a political-military barrier against refugees and the French Minister of the Interior, Albert Sarraut, legislated against these foreigners, with the support of the military. The French Army set up zero prison camps in the departments of Arieg, Auden, Herault, Tarn and Garonne, as well as in the departments of the Pyrenees Low. The captivity that came from Franco’s message, also in France, was unexpectedly imposed on the majority of the fugitives.

Led by gendarmes and military, thousands of people headed to Argeles and Saint Cyprien and received the first wave of desolation between sands, skies, seas and arriostres.

The French government did not design this situation overnight; since 1938, the local authorities foresaw the defeat of the Spanish Republic and, as a consequence, the flooding of exiles. According to the plans and reports that can be consulted in the archives, the army engineers had already identified the basic areas such as those of Saint Cyprien and other places to house concentration camps. But the huge group of exiles created by the Retirist of 1939 exceeded all expectations. That excuse was the one that they used for many years to justify the miserable attitude of France.

“Short rights, little food, too patron”

However, they have been much more difficult to justify the repressive character of the new fields such as Sept Fonds, Bram, Noe, Agde, Gurs, etc., built in the spring of 1939. The euphemisms (Reception Camp, Internment Camp, Spanish Refugee Camps, District of Supervised Stays…) were not enough to cover the suffering suffered by those present.

Several chronicles written in Basque show the situation experienced by the Basques. The arrasatearra Ander Garate Gesalibar was in Argeles in February and March 1939 and in Gurs in April 1939, reflecting very well the suffering of the refugees among the Riojanas. The few months he was hospitalized were enough to realize the special policy that existed with regard to refugees. As it was at three concentration points: Beziers, Argeles and Gurs had the experience to describe and analyze them. In his first chronicles, he showed an optimistic view, especially because the Basques faced the situation through self-organization, but in the latter, in Gurs, he showed a greater difference. He summed it up perfectly in the chronicle he sent from the Gurs Field: “Short rights, little food, too patron.”

Other testimonies extracted from Gurs himself or from Bram and Le Vernet were more bitter. In letters, newspapers or reports, and later, in literary works, we have examples of works written by Leonardo Salazar, Celestino Uriarte, Agustín Centelles, Max Aube or Arthur Koestler. In the words of all, it was noted that the camps created to be “places of welcome” had become real concentration camps. If this were not enough, the temporary infrastructure that it was supposed to host until its return to its home country not only continued during the Second World War, but conditions deteriorated completely.

As a result of the 1936 War, the number of refugees from the southern Pyrenees was declining: many of them were returned to Spain, sought work and had fun in France and began the second exile in America. But instead of dissolving the network of camps it was consolidated, first with the governments of Daladier and Reynaud and then with the authorities of Vichy. The policy of arresting World War II was tightened and extended since 1940. The Jews, the Communists, the refugees of Austria, Germany, Italy and Spain, the men and women, the old and the young… All of them repopulated the semi-idealized camps.

Argeles, Rivesaltes, Rieucros and Gurs became another link in the policy of Destruction, launched in Europe controlled by the Nazis, especially since 1942. Thousands of people came out of them who were going to die in “endless convoys” to Auschwitz or Mauthausen, in compliance with the “Final Decision” that was launched that year.

The arrests, raids, mass internments, deportations and mass killings during the Second World War therefore had a direct precedent: France des Camps, founded as a result of the Withdrawal of 1939. In words such as "welcome", the denial of human rights was concealed, to the detriment of refugees. 80 years later, changing the scale, we have similar situations at European borders and in places of internal detention. Euphemisms have a euphemism, a regrettable attitude towards refugees and migrants from European states.