Rebuilding the San Antón bridge, Bilbao

The entry of Francoist troops into Bilbao on June 19, 1937, brought the war in the Basque Country to an end. In the final days of the fighting, with defeat certain, the members of the Basque government led by the president, lehendakari, José Antonio Aguirre, abandoned the city, which was left in the charge of the Bilbao Defence Council headed by the Justice Minister, Jesús María de Leizaola.   

Leizola ordered that all the bridges be destroyed so that the enemy advance would at least be slowed down and the civilian population would have more time to escape and avoid reprisals from the future Francoist dictatorship. Thus, on the morning of June 18 to 19, the First Basque Division, commanded by the Frenchman Joseph Putz, a member of the International Brigades, destroyed the city’s bridges.   

The Francoist authorities had to rebuild them as quickly as possible. The speed with which the new municipal government headed by mayor José María Areilza carried out this task, as well as giving the rebuilt bridges new names, demonstrates the bridges’ symbolic and practical importance.   

The new regime used the reconstruction of the city’s basic infrastructure as a propaganda tool. All the bridges except the San Antón bridge, whose name had religious connotations, were named after important Francoists or important moments in the war and the Republican defeat. The Isabel II bridge became the Bridge of Victory; the Begoña or City Hall bridge became the General Mola bridge, and the Deusto bridge was named after Franco himself. Bridges thus became places of memory, part of the new regime’s habitua practice of renaming streets, squares and all sorts of buildings to turn them into symbols of its victory that always reminded people who had won the Civil War – and who had lost it. 

APE / UB/ MJV