Richard Harrington: My Grandfather's War

I'm Richard Harrington. I've been an actor for most of my life.

I'm currently playing a detective in the BBC crime drama Hinterland.

But there is one mystery that I've never been able to solve.

It involves my grandfather, Timothy Harrington, a man I never knew.

The story begins on the night of the 17th of April, 1937.

While his wife and children were asleep, he crept downstairs,

put a few things in a bag, and left.

The only clue was a note saying, "Gone to Spain."

My grandfather left Merthyr Tydfil,

and with hundreds of other miners from Wales

he travelled to Spain to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War.

Their aim - to fight tyranny, oppression,

defend democracy and create a better world for all.

GUNSHOT

My grandfather was a man of action.

He just knew that what was happening in Spain was fundamentally wrong,

and he was going to do something about it.

And that has a certain amount of zeal and conviction and passion.

Perhaps I'll find a purpose for my passion and anger one day.

HE CHUCKLES

I've decided to follow the journey my grandfather took to Spain

nearly 80 years ago.

Where I hope to discover what really made him leave his home and his family

to fight in another country's war.

When I'm not away filming,

I spend as much time as I can with my two boys Ralff and Ned.

They know nothing about my grandfather Tim

or what he stood for, but I'd really like them to.

Tim lived and breathed politics,

but like many of my generation I can take it or leave it.

What I do know I learned from Tim's son, my uncle Illtyd Harrington,

who became a leading light in the Labour Party of the 1970s and '80s,

and was deputy leader of the Greater London Council.

I envy Tim and Illtyd

because they stood up for what they believed in.

My grandfather kept diaries for most of his life

and there is one that intrigues me more than more the others,

the one from 1937, the year he left for Spain.

I've started to look into the war he joined

and at the propaganda that came from both sides.

This slogan's for Spain.

"None shall pass." Do you like them?

-Yeah.

-Which one's your favourite?

-That one.

-Why?

-Hm?

-Why?

-Because people are dead.

RICHARD LAUGHS

Yeah, that's a nice one.

My grandfather left his family to fight for a cause.

I could never imagine doing such a thing.

But his eyes had been opened and he could see no other way.

Bye!

-Bye!

-Bye.

-Bye.

So why did the war in Spain happen?

In February 1936, Spain had elected a left-wing government.

They had radical plans to redistribute vast quantities of land

and give it to the poor.

This outraged the wealthy landowners and their supporters.

In July of that year,

with the backing of the Fascist party and the Catholic Church,

the army led a coup d'etat against the democratically elected government.

The eventual leader of this resistance, General Francisco Franco,

saw right-wing dictatorship as the only way forward for Spain.

This led to a civil war between the coalition of nationalists, fascists,

and the Catholic Church against the people of Spain,

who were supported by volunteers from all over the world

who came together in what became known as the International Brigade.

I've come to the Marx Memorial Library in Central London

where some of the records of the International Brigade are held

in the hope of finding an entry for my grandfather.

The archivist Meirian Jump's grandfather was also an International Brigader.

-Here we've got...

-Timothy Harrington, yeah.

Arrived in Spain 29th of May, 1937.

"He's an outstanding case of a comrade who should never have gone

"and been sent back, and one look by a doctor would have rejected him."

I see, because he must've looked emaciated even prior to the war, I guess.

"Tends to grumble."

That's a Harrington trait.

I'm quite proud of Tim, actually, for being grumbly because, I guess,

you know, I mean, these are kind of characters that...

have gone out from their own will,

so they must be strong-minded people,

they're not going to be pushed around lightly.

So, the fact that he grumbles is a good thing, I guess.

I bet he grumbled about a lot of stuff.

But I think that's just...

They are all very self-effacing men and they know what they want.

We've had a few people come here, actually, who...

You know, people just went off without telling anyone in their family.

-Yeah, well, my grandfather did.

-Yeah.

He left a letter saying, "Gone to Spain."

We had someone come in saying they'd gone to the grocery shop.

In Spain!

Is your grandfather in here?

He's not on this list, no.

We do have some records that relate to him, though.

You do? What was his name, by the way?

-Jimmy Jump.

-Jimmy Jump?

-Yeah.

My God, I could see a play forming in my mind now.

The largest grouping of British Brigaders were minors from South Wales.

The recollections of some of them were captured on film.

The night before we went,

I took my daughter to bed.

It was...

I made the decision right then, you see,

but I knew that once the die was cast I had to carry it through.

I left home without saying a word to my father and mother.

I asked for an early call in the morning to get me up in time

and I left the house without a word to anyone.

I hated fascism,

I hated authoritarianism

and I wanted to prevent a Second World War, if you like,

and this was the reason I went to Spain.

Then Meirian showed me some images that must have horrified Tim and others like him.

They're of dead children who were bombed by the fascists.

Oh, no!

Oh, my God!

Oh, no!

Oh, dear God!

Oh, my God! That's just heartbreaking.

Children.

Oh...

"If you tolerate this, then your children will be next."

Oh, this is just...

Don't know what to say, really.

I mean, these are the pictures,

these are things that are happening today in our world

and we're not seeing pictures of them.

I mean, if I'd have been...

you know, a young man with a young family...

..living in a country where there was a threat of something

that could take away our lives and our welfare...

-And these photographs have obviously being released.

-..that would have...

..that would have galvanised me to...

..to do something about it, I guess.

Tim and others like him felt compelled to act.

But Britain and France had signed a pact of non-intervention

making it illegal to travel to Spain to fight.

Even getting out of the country would be a victory in itself.

We went in twos to Victoria Station,

got our weekend tickets and walked up and down.

Suddenly, two big detectives come onto us.

They had the usual big feet and they said,

"We think you're going to Spain."

I said, "We're going for a jolly weekend to Paris."

He said, "I think you're going to Spain."

I said, "No."

"Well, you'd better be back on Monday or you'll be in trouble."

Well, all his other diaries are pretty lucid and they flow very well.

They don't just depict times and places, the people that he met,

but they...

express a feeling, you know, a consciousness.

Whereas these are very cryptic in lots of ways.

And I guess that was for the fear of capture

because you can't really...

Or he couldn't have really put down his actual thoughts.

Just little...

things that probably would have reminded him of how he was feeling at that time, you know?

"Premium clothed, left our seating behind, climbed stairs."

Not sure what that means yet.

"Long dusty road to the opera."

I'm sure he wasn't talking about Tosca.

He wasn't a young man.

He must've travelled with lots of young men. He was 35 years old.

That was considered to be over the hill. We've read the archives,

he wasn't well, he was emaciated, you know.

The guy should have been holed up in bed, really,

he shouldn't have been on a train, certainly not be travelling.

That's stressful enough.

But the will of some of these people is what we're talking about

and that's what we're trying to find out, isn't it?

It's what...

What drives a person to leave their family

to fight for a cause that...

..we all should have been fighting for, really?

Tim and his comrades then travelled by boat and train before finally

arriving in Paris at 9:15pm on the 18th of April, 1937.

There was still a real danger of them getting caught,

arrested and sent home.

Local communist agents were there to greet them

and take them to safe houses.

We'd been up all night, singing all the way over from England.

We hadn't had any sleep.

The instructions we had from the start, "Don't talk to anybody,

"don't tell anybody where you're going."

It was all very hush-hush.

There were groups of people coming from other countries at the same time,

and I found there was about 400-odd International Brigaders,

if you like, or potential, at that time.

I've arranged to meet up with Roberto,

who's a member of the Friends of the Fighters in Republican Spain

and whose grandfather was imprisoned for many years by General Franco.

So when they arrived in Paris,

how many nights would they have stayed here?

It depends. It could be one week, two weeks, three weeks.

It depends how...

..the journey was prepared or not.

But they were staying in hotels?

-Hotels or...

-Or with people?

-With people, yes.

-Families?

-Yes, yes.

Because a lot of these men had left their families. It must have been...

No, you had a big...

organisation here to receive the people.

Control whatever there was any control to be done with their health,

with their spirit or so.

You have to remember also that at this time there was a lot of spies.

When you think about it, it's amazing

to go to a country that you don't know, you don't speak the language,

you don't even know what's there.

A lot of these people had never fought.

-Never fought. They are pacifists.

-Yeah.

So what was the feeling then?

I'm trying to engage with what the feeling was,

the feeling of that dread of fascism,

that notion that democracy was going to be crushed.

What was that feeling,

what was that tangible feeling that must have been so apparent in the air

in France and across the world?

No, it was apparent for the people who fought in Spain.

But to leave your family, to leave your family to go to Spain.

Where I was from, which was miles away, it was like Timbuktu,

-it was another world.

-When you ask these people this question,

the Brigaders, the answer most of the time...

.."I had to be there."

Without sometimes too big an expression.

So it was a strong feeling that we have to be there.

-To our grandfathers?

-Oh, yes.

Thanks, Roberto.

Under the cover of darkness,

Tim and his fellow Brigaders came out of hiding from all corners of Paris

and made their way to the train station.

There were spies and police everywhere

trying to spot volunteers leaving for Spain.

Tim was getting further away from home

and further away from his family,

but, like many others, the need for justice drove him on.

It must've been a hell of a sense of liberty to arrive in Paris

and know that you've finally got an identity for your beliefs,

you congregate in a place where...

..kindred spirits are from all over the world

and you've suddenly found something international to defeat...

..a fascist state, by means of democracy.

Extraordinary, extraordinary situation.

I've always been told that my grandfather was a hard, uncompromising man.

Born in Merthyr from Irish Catholic stock, he was an atheist,

a coal miner, a champion boxer and a soldier who was gassed in the First World War.

He married Sally and had five children, one of which was my father.

The Depression of the 1930s brought unemployment

and poverty to South Wales.

Tim became a committed and radical communist

and led a hunger march to London in 1934.

He was then blacklisted and found work hard to come by.

And it's difficult to imagine the frustration and anger he must have felt.

I guess it's the spirit, the spirit of people, of working class-ness,

is that people are happy to work for a shilling.

But don't take away our liberty.

I'd much rather live in a place where...

There's something in here that equates to that.

"I'd much rather live in a place where...

"nobody called anyone Senor or Don, everyone called each other comrade."

I'd much rather be there.

Equality is what it was about, I think.

Tuesday, April the 20th, 1937.

Tim arrived in Perpignan on the Spanish border at 9:30am.

I have no idea how he must've felt walking these streets,

knowing that he was about to join a war that was happening only a few

kilometres away on the other side of the Pyrenees.

By all accounts, this town hasn't really changed.

Very peaceful, I guess.

This would have been the last stop or a point of turning back

if you had any doubts.

He knew this was going to be really bloody, I think.

The more I read his diaries, the more I feel almost similar to him.

I've been writing stuff myself.

And I'm a stickler for times and dates.

And so was he. You know, it's in the blood, isn't it?

There's an anger inside me as well, which I feel about the world.

I don't know, I feel powerless as to what I can do about it.

I guess I've got to make my home a good place, I think, and my children,

instil goodness into them.

Tim was a very angry man but, then,

doing this journey, the reasons why we're doing it, you can see why.

Angry men is what made this war happen.

Angry men is what ultimately destroyed fascism

and restored democracy. Angry men do that.

So perhaps I'm an angry man, but I'm glad for it, really.

Tim writes in his diary,

"I climbed the stairs before taking the long, dusty road to the opera."

Now I think I know what he meant.

He was crossing the Pyrenees into war.

Tim and his comrades were told of an old smugglers' route through the

mountains that would give them a chance of reaching the safety of

Republican-held Figueres on the north-eastern coast of Spain

without getting captured or killed.

The altitude and terrain would be difficult.

Tim had been gassed in the First World War and had damaged his lungs.

It would be a struggle.

As it was getting late, about 5am, we were climbing a narrow track.

The guide shouted, "Allez! Get moving, quick!"

As we reached the top of the path, on the top was a stone monolith.

On one side it said, "France."

On the other side, "Espana."

We were in Spain and we were in the Civil War.

By the time Tim arrived in Spain,

the Civil War had been going on for around nine months

and tens of thousands had already died.

Despite some military support from the Soviet Union,

the Republicans were severely hindered by the international embargo,

initiated by the British and French governments, which aimed to prevent weapons,

soldiers and supplies from reaching them.

Franco had made a covert pact with Hitler and Mussolini.

They would supply him with substantial airpower,

arms and troops.

And the inferior arsenal of the Republicans were no match for

the advanced weaponry of the Nationalists.

After crossing the Pyrenees safely,

Tim and his fellow Brigaders headed for an old military fort on

the outskirts of Figueres.

This was the main meeting point for the volunteers arriving in northern Spain.

Men and women from all over the world congregated here,

where they were given a uniform, a paybook, some very basic training

and whatever weapons they could get their hands on.

The first training we had was with wooden sticks.

It was only two days before we had orders to move into action

we were issued with rifles.

We didn't fire the darn things because most of them wouldn't fire.

The one I had, I think it had a barrel about four feet long.

It might have been used by Napoleon in the

Battle of Waterloo, for all I know.

Franco's forces were made up of trained soldiers,

police and troops from North Africa and the Foreign Legion.

They had the latest weaponry, including tanks and bombers.

The Republicans and the International Brigade were not nearly as well equipped.

Tim writes in his diary about shooting an old gun and attending lectures

on aerial bombardment in French, German and Spanish,

and not understanding a single word.

He receives the Merthyr Gazette,

goes swimming in a lake and attends a May Day concert.

But then he begins to lose sleep.

He was an experienced soldier and knew the war was getting closer.

The bars of Figueres would have been Tim's last chance of normality

before being sent into battle.

He writes in his diary about singing Republican songs and drinking cognac

with Dave from New York.

Listen, I'm a Harrington, do you know what I mean,

of Irish stock.

Harringtons are great drinkers, storytellers, raconteurs, you know.

And even though the images I have of him are quite ghostly and emaciated

and a bit withdrawn from life,

I'm sure that's the direct effects of what he'd seen.

I'm sure as a young man he was incredibly exciting.

Must have been. Must've been full of humour, stories, history, passion.

I imagine he was a very passionate man.

He was also...

Which I overlooked first of all when I read it because...

..obviously you stick to the diary, but there's a lot of memoranda stuff

in it, addresses in the back.

It's all very exotic, you know?

"L O'Toole from 858 West Side, Jersey, New York.

"J Murphy, 505 West 43rd Street, New York."

I mean, that's...

It must have been exciting to write those addresses down and to feel a

kinship with people that lived across the pond, you know.

And there's stuff in the diary here as well about drinking champagne,

and...

It must have been a lot of

comradeship and bravado.

But the one thing in here is that

it feels as if, and I'm not speaking out of turn,

he remained very true to Sally.

He writes to her, he talks of his disappointment of not receiving any letters.

She was obviously not very happy with his decision to go.

But a letter eventually does come,

and I think he talks about going for a long walk

as soon as he's read that letter.

In his diary,

there are references to him writing to Sally several times

and that he was always waiting for a reply.

He'd left Sally behind to look after

the children with no means of support.

Even though she publicly stood up for her husband against those in her

community who hated the communists,

privately she must have deeply resented the situation

her husband had left her in.

Life isn't black and white.

It's a struggle to keep a family together.

Guilt and shame is a useless, wasted emotion.

You can't do anything with it.

I think it's important to feel it,

but to carry it with you does nothing...

..nothing whatsoever for...

..your welfare or for the people that you're responsible to.

Tim was fighting a cause in Spain, but he was actually

doing it for his home, his own children.

That's what I'm learning. They were good people,

and evil triumphs when good people do nothing.

On the 3rd of June, 1937,

Tim makes a note in his diary about going into battle in Madrid.

He was there for ten days,

but there are no details of his involvement in the battle.

It was thought at the time that gaining control of the capital city

would prove crucial to the outcome of the war.

Franco decided to attack from the west.

In his way was the University of Madrid.

Members of the International Brigade joined students and Republican troops

to try and defend the university buildings.

To understand more about what happened here, I met with Almudena Cros,

the president of the association of the friends of the International

Brigade, who showed me evidence of the fighting that took place here

during the early battles of Madrid.

You have a combination of basically bullets and machine-gun fire.

You have heavier-calibre weapons.

You have here, you start seeing them.

The sort of thing you'd normally see on the news in Syria or something.

You wouldn't expect it to be in modern-day Spain,

-even though this was over 80 years ago.

-Mm-hm.

So this is a piece of shrapnel, OK?

-This is some of the pellets that would have been inside mortars.

-Mm-hm.

This is...

-a live...

-Bullet?

-A bullet. Fascist bullet.

So these guys are there kneeling,

using the radiators and books,

and, you know, sandbags and whatever.

And they are fighting from the classrooms.

When you think about the students these days,

coming here to learn medicine,

and this is a building that was the sight of a lot of injuries and a lot

of deaths, it's very interesting.

So the testimony in the journal of John Summerfield,

it says in here, "It was almost done.

"Shells were falling now and there was much shooting.

"Machine guns stood by the doors and there were sandbag barricades.

"The tile floor was thick with dirt and brick dust."

So these guys are building barricades with books,

and in the university library museum they have still some books.

-Oh, my goodness!

-So it's really interesting to kind of

think about the attack on culture

and the attack on universal education

that these people were defending.

How literature saved their lives in lots of ways.

Exactly. German philosophy.

-Germany philosophy, it saved them.

-Yeah.

The students and the Republicans held the university and the city,

but it was still surrounded by fascist troops

and Madrid was now under siege.

On the outskirts of Madrid is the small village of Brunete.

This was the location of one of the most crucial battles of the Civil War.

The Republican Army hoped to strike a devastating blow to Franco's forces.

Tim was part of the 15th International Brigaders,

who made their way here in July 1937.

A few days before the battle,

Tim writes in his diary that he dreams of his young son Illtyd running towards him,

and just before they embrace,

he wakes up to find himself not at home in Merthyr Tydfil,

but in Spain and about to go into battle.

All your politics has to be done before you arrive, so the thing,

the most natural thing to do is to go over the top and do it,

you know.

He was a man of action.

He did it.

The Republican troops made their way towards the front line.

The Nationalist troops were significantly outnumbered,

but they were better trained and had the support of superior German airpower.

The ultimate aim of the Republicans was to gain control of the area

and cut off supplies to the Nationalists,

who were besieging the capital.

But to succeed, they would have to capture the two small villages of

Brunete and Villanueva de la Canada.

It would be a bloody battle.

Two local historians, Ernesto Vinas and Sven Tuytens,

have studied the Battle of Brunete in detail.

So, paint a picture for me now -

if we were stood here in 1937 on July the 6th,

what would we be looking at now?

Well, the first day of the offensive they reached Brunete,

that's the village beyond Villanueva de la Canada.

So the troops that attacked Brunete, they reached their objectives.

The problem was, Villanueva de la Canada,

they thought it would fall like Brunete, but it didn't fall.

There was a small village before reaching Brunete,

and I remember we got into that village

and there were women and children

lying about in the streets being killed,

and you had to get used to this kind of thing.

And then to get used to seeing your own colleagues being wiped out.

One man on the right, who was very tall, he was about 6'2",

a shell came and blew his head off,

and he was still walking for the next 20 or 30 yards.

This is also one of the first times that the Germans,

the German aeroplanes, dropped napalm.

So everything here was...

Blown.

-..was on fire.

-On fire, yeah.

We have testimonies of Brigaders that are telling us that

the soles of their shoes were melting down.

This delay in the taking of these two small villages allowed

the Nationalists to bring in reinforcements,

which enabled them to overpower the Republican Army.

The fascist planes and tanks were everywhere.

Their mortars rained destruction everywhere. It was absolute hell.

Despite being under constant attack,

Tim and his fellow soldiers fought on.

In his diary, he gives a typical factual description of his involvement in the battle.

"Left wood at 3am, advanced at 5am, went over the top at 12."

There is one final entry for the 6th of July 1937.

It simply says, "Collapsed."

This is the actual field where Tim's war came to an end.

Today there are no signs of the horrific battle that took place here

nearly 80 years ago.

It must've been a very frightening thing for him.

I mean, he comes out all this way, he trains for...

..almost two months in order to start this offensive

and he doesn't get shot,

there's no glory in it, he's exhausted

because he's a 35-year-old man

with half his lung capacity working and not very well.

It must've been a devastating moment for him, you know.

I think he probably would have liked to have gone on.

I'm sure Tim would have stayed for three years, if he had the choice.

He was just old and frail.

Ernesto and Sven have found a record of what happened to Tim

after he left the battlefield.

We have a surprise for you.

It's our homework we've done.

Look, page three and read at the top.

Harrington...

This is a list of the 5th Brigade,

of the 15th Brigade, and it's a list of casualties.

So, Harrington.

Tim, Tom,

English, 16th battalion,

was hospitalised in Madrid.

Yes, and the day fits absolutely, July the 7th.

-With his diary.

-Yeah.

He's hit the 6th, and he's listed here the 7th.

-So it is the same person.

-And it says here, doesn't it,

"I arrive in hospital..."

"I arrive in hospital on the 7th,"

and the official document says the same.

And here you have the name of the hospital.

-The name of the hospital.

-Madrid.

And here you have all the names of his company

-who were...

-That joined him.

Who joined him in hospitals, different hospitals.

-Oh, my goodness!

-This is all casualties.

Well, it's great because...

I'm glad he was sick so there's a record of him.

-I'm sure there's probably lots of people that went home that didn't have that, right?

-Yes.

It's kind of an honour to be on this, is it?

Thanks, guys.

Thank you very much.

The fighting continued for almost 19 days, with nearly 40,000 casualties,

the majority of which were Republican soldiers.

The International Brigade was virtually annihilated.

It was a massacre.

The men destroyed here came from all over the world,

35,000 of them, and we should, you know...

What have they got to show for it?

Their aim was to capture that town and to restore democracy.

The sad thing is that, you know,

here we are 80 years later and there are still Francoites out there,

still protecting his name.

That angers me, that makes me feel angry.

Tim would spend two weeks in the hospital in Madrid

before beginning his long journey home to Wales.

The war raged on. Tens of thousands continued to die on both sides.

Towns and villages all over Spain were either destroyed or left in ruins.

Belchite is one such place.

I know I asked a question earlier about...

..was there any point dragging up a war that happened 80 years ago?

And yet we find ourselves in the middle of southern, you know,

the middle of Spain,

a town that was hammered during the Spanish Civil War by...

..the fascist army and democratic army, and yet it's been preserved.

By which side, I don't know.

But there must be a reason for that.

To remind everyone of what it was about.

I guess there is a reason to...

..to not forget the past.

It's quite eerie, but quite beautiful as well.

It was up to Belchite.

We'd captured the small town,

but 500 fascists had made a fortress out of the church,

so they wouldn't surrender.

So we had to make them surrender, and we had to blow out the church.

When I looked at the churches that we had to destroy or damage very badly,

it always hurt me, and indeed any building,

because some of the buildings were very beautiful,

and churches in particular.

There was...

a feeling that I was doing the wrong thing.

But, you see, the fascists used these churches as fortifications.

This young lad, he told me that the local Father was a member of

the fascist party. When the hostilities broke out,

he had got them into the church tower and he was shooting at the women

and children where they draw water from and do their washing.

And two brothers went up into the tower and they caught this priest,

they put the rope around his neck and threw him out.

His head was on the rope and his body was on the floor.

Franco and his army, with the help of Germany and Italy,

eventually defeated the Republican forces.

Over half a million would die.

Juan Simon is in charge of protecting the ruins of Belchite.

In the years of Franco,

this is a place only for the Francoists,

for the fallen of the National Army and the National...the rebels.

This cross doesn't look like it's survived the war,

it feels as if it's a monument...

-Si, yeah.

-..that was placed after the war.

-Is that true?

-It's a symbol of the Nationalist government,

the Francoist regime.

There's something very similar...

Only for the fallen of one side, one side.

All the monuments made...

..in this period were only for one side, the Francoist side, of course.

So the suggestion that God was only on one side.

Mm-hm. Because the nature of

the regime is very segregationist, I think.

So the Republic offensive was a direct attack on God.

On God, maybe, yeah.

For the Francoists, for the rebels, yeah.

Mm-hm.

RICHARD SIGHS

Jesus, man.

Franco kept this place because he wanted to remind his people of

what he did, how he saved them from...

..a democratic rule.

The paradox is he was oppressing them, suppressing them.

You know, part of me thinks that they should really just flatten it, really.

I didn't find any comfort while I was there, it's a horrible place.

In the years immediately after the war,

Francisco Franco ordered the execution of over 100,000 people.

With the support of the Catholic Church,

tens of thousands of children were forcibly taken from their parents

and given to pro-Franco families.

As the Cold War escalated, and with the threat of communism looming,

Franco was now regarded as a key ally by most Western governments,

including the UK.

He would reign as a dictator for another 36 years,

until his death in 1975.

Julen Robles is a Basque film producer that helped with the making of this documentary.

To understand the effect the reign of Franco has had on the Spanish people,

and on Julen himself,

he wanted to take me to a place called the Valley of the Fallen,

where Franco's body was laid to rest.

Franco killed hundreds of thousands of people after the war.

The police would arrive in the night-time and they'll say,

"No, we're taking you for a walk," and disappear.

Spain is the second country in the world with more people disappeared

just after Cambodia. There's 150,000 people disappeared,

mostly in the sides of the roads.

They will, boom, kill them and bury somewhere.

-Really?

-Yeah. There are 150,000 people still have not been found

and the government is not helping at all.

Why, why aren't they excavating these mass graves,

why aren't they finding them?

Because all the democracy in Spain is built over the silence.

Let the time pass and let the people forget.

But people is not forgetting

because it's difficult to forget when your family was killed.

This will happen again.

I don't know if it's going to be in Spain or in Germany

or in Greece or in Poland, I don't know, but this will happen again

because we're not thinking for ourselves.

JULEN MUTTERS IN SPANISH

People need more culture, more knowledge, to understand

that this cannot happen again.

In Spain, it happened in Spain, it could happen everywhere, everywhere.

Fascists still come here,

on a pilgrimage to pay homage to the great leader

Generalissimo Francisco Franco.

So what is your...? What is your T-shirt, what do they mean?

Can you explain to us what it means?

THEY SPEAK SPANISH

The legend...

Here it says,

"This is my flag."

What is the flag?

-The flag is the Francoist flag.

-OK.

HE SPEAKS SPANISH

And this is, the legend is a battalion of the Spanish army.

MAN SPEAKS SPANISH

They are a very strong, right-wing battalion inside the Spanish army.

What do you think about what Franco would want now?

Would you like to see somebody like him reign again in Spain?

THEY SPEAK SPANISH

Yeah, hopefully...

SHE SPEAKS SPANISH

Hopefully will, someone like him, at least a year,

just to restore things again.

Do you think Spain should be an inclusive place for everybody?

Any colour, any creed, any religion?

HE SPEAKS SPANISH

-No.

-No.

-No.

-No.

-No.

Who is not welcome?

THEY SPEAK SPANISH

Islamists are not welcome.

THEY SPEAK SPANISH

They don't come to work, they come to robbery.

HE SPEAKS SPANISH

No people from South America, people from Morocco,

they would rather not to be there.

-They prefer European people.

-OK.

OK, great, thank you so much.

THEY SPEAK SPANISH

I don't know what to say, really.

-They're fascist.

-Yeah.

I mean, the thing about it is,

the cold front of it is they appear to be as normal as you.

And they have their opinions and their ideology's one thing.

I don't feel any anger towards them at all.

It's their opinion, they're in love

and it's what they believe in. But, you know,

I don't know what a collective noun of all those people are called,

but I can certainly think of a couple of things.

I don't know, I'm lost for words, really.

I should really hate everything that they stand for,

but they seem like amiable people.

But their politics is dangerous, I believe. It's...

They're not a democratic...

They don't believe in a democratic system, so...

You saw how emotional Julen was in the car arriving here.

He had some pent-up anger, and I'm feeling a little bit like that now,

to be honest.

Is this what all those people died for, for this?

It's quite sad, really. I think I want to smash it down.

It's not a symbol of freedom.

It's not a symbol of democracy

because we've been followed up here by skinheads in cars as well.

This is a huge echo to hate and hatred.

This isn't...

This isn't what all those people came out here to fight for.

This is the sunny Spain, the viva espana that you don't see

when you fly over here and go to the beaches.

This is quite sickly, I think.

Populated the world with hatred, not with love.

There's no love here at all.

I feel sorry for the bloke in his mother's arms there.

But is that how you portray it, a Christ as colourful as he was?

Grey?

Is that how you portray a symbol of love?

No.

No. This isn't how I was raised.

This isn't part of my ideology.

It's beautiful to see those people over there with red and yellow

and pink and vibrant colours.

Look at it. Look.

Almost out of place, children.

They have no idea where they're coming.

I hope their teacher educates them.

It's nice to hear children's laughter here, isn't it?

That is wonderful, that makes me want to weep.

Yes, that's what it should be, this.

That sound is what it should be.

Laughter.

Have a good laugh at him.

Terrible.

It's weird. I didn't expect that.

And what do they know about General Franco?

JULEN SPEAKS SPANISH

TRANSLATION:

What do you think works, democracy or dictatorship?

THEY SPEAK SPANISH

-ALL:

-Democracia!

Can we make this place echo with that word?

Yeah, OK.

-JULEN SPEAKS SPANISH

-One, two, three.

-KIDS SHOUT:

-Democracia!

Over 40 years after the death of Franco,

Spain and its people are still trying to deal with the ghosts of the past.

But there is hope for reconciliation.

A new political party, Podemos, which means simply "we can",

have caught the imagination of sections of the Spanish people.

Their message is one of fresh hope for the future,

and an inclusive and peaceful Spain.

Nearly 80 years ago,

Tim decided to make a stand against an evil ideology.

But fascism would eventually lead to the Second World War,

costing millions of lives.

Throughout Europe, and even on our own doorstep,

the far right are on the rise once again.

We can't afford to ignore what's happening

because all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men and women

to do nothing.

When Tim returned to Merthyr Tydfil on 13th September, 1937,

there was no hero's welcome.

But Sally was there.

She'd come to understand that once his eyes had been opened,

there was no other way.

Tim and Sally both died in 1973, six months apart.

My boys will now know who their great-grandparents were

and what they sacrificed to try and make a better world for them.

My father pointed out to me one day that...

..his dad used to like coming to sit at this tree occasionally, as well.

So it's become sort of symbolic to me, really.

Some of my grandfather's ashes were actually scattered around this area,

and I've been carrying Uncle Illtyd with me today.

And I feel it's only appropriate to put some of Illtyd here, too.

This tree has become inherently symbolic of who my grandfather was.

And now I bring my own kids here.

You know, they run around this place, but it's embedding into them now,

not just historically, but it's the future as well.

It's a place where...

..you just come and feel a belonging to who you are

and what you are and where you came from.

Well, yeah, like it or lump it, boys, I mean,

yeah, I guess I'm doing this to pass it onto them,

for them to pass it on to their children.

I think those things are really important.

And this will become a symbol of something else to them, really.

But as long as it's here, I'll still be here.

-Innit?

-Yeah.