| Residents flee through battle-scarred Lérida streets in the region of Catalonia in northeastern Spain. Nationalist rebels fought with the Republican troops in the streets. On April 3, Lérida fell to the Nationalists. A month later, author Ernest Hemingway filed this report, written before Fascist victory. The New York Times, April 30, 1938: “Lérida Is Divided By Warring Forces – By Ernest Hemingway [(July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961)] – Lérida, Spain, April 29. — Your correspondent entered Lérida today. It’s not very hard to do. All you have to do is keep your legs moving steadily and control a slight tickling sensation between your shoulder blades and the base of your neck as you cross the railway yard and come under machine-gun fire from a tower 500 yards away.” “I am now able to reveal that the government holds almost one-third of the town, all the east bank of the Segre River and the controlling junction of the three great main roads to Catalonia–one going north to Balaguer and France, another east to Barcelona and another southeast to Tarragona.” “If Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s [(December 4, 1892 – November 20, 1975)] troops had been able to conquer the eastern part of Lérida they would have had access to these three trunks lines into Catalonia. As it is, they are bottled in the old medieval part of the town facing the Segre River, and the government is heavily fortified along its banks, with the railway station, the railroad yards and all the road junctions behind them.” “Yet Moors and regular Spanish troops, installed in the square-towered brown old castle and on the roofs of other buildings in the old town, can lash the roads with machine-gun fire. But the government fortifications are pushed close under them as if they were besieging Lérida, and General Franco would need a large-scale offensive in order to attempt to conquer the eastern part of the town and gain access to the roads that are pipelines into Catalonia.” “The troops holding eastern Lérida are veterans of the siege of Madrid and already have constructed ditches and communication trenches, taking advantage of every fold of the ground that would mean the difference between being sniped through the head and being able to go about their business calmly and quietly.” “The state of the Segre and Ebro Rivers will play an important role in the next few weeks. For six weeks General Franco has had perfect weather for his mechanized offensive. The usual torrential Spanish Spring rains have been absent and the rivers are falling slowly but steadily. Whether it rains becomes an important military question, for, without rain the Ebro and the Segre, where the lines are now based, will be fordable at various places within a month.” “For a week now the weather has been bleak and cold, and yesterday the first rain started. If it keeps up, Loyalist Spain can have no greater ally, as full river beds are great, free, swirling fortifications, while drying shallows favor General Franco’s infiltration tactics.” “After a week along the Ebro and Segre Rivers and a month on the front, this correspondent is unable to see conclusion of the Spanish war. Ordinarily, after the Aragon defeats and General Franco’s cutting of Valencia from Barcelona, one would expect a military collapse. There has been none. If it were war-game maneuvers and divisions were surrounded, they would be announced as destroyed by the umpires. In the last ten days I have visited four divisions, all of which would have been destroyed under this classification.” “‘But we learned one thing not in military manuals,’ a twenty-three-year-old battalion commander explained yesterday in Lérida. ‘That is, how to come through at night after having been surrounded. Rifles, pistols and machine guns are no good for that. When challenged, throw a bomb, then rush them, bombing ahead as you go. If you know you will be shot when captured, it makes for new tactics.’” “Today the front is about a hundred miles from Barcelona, where the Segre River splits the town of Lérida. That is as far as it was four weeks ago.” | |
| Image Filename | wwii1810.jpg |
| Image Size | 334.08 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 1361 x 1684 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | April 1, 1938 |
| Location | |
| City | Lérida |
| State or Province | Catalonia |
| Country | Spain |
| Archive | |
| Record Number | |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
Author of the World War II Multimedia Database