The “Republic of Andorra”

The coup d’état and the civil war that followed it disrupted the lives of millions of Spaniards. Repression and social control, also enforced through hunger and misery, made life inside Spain untenable for many citizens who had defended the legitimacy of the Republic. Faced with this situation, they had a wide range of alternatives.

One was the small community of Spanish refugees who, between 1936 and 1944, crossed the border with Portugal and settled in the vicinity of Campo Maior. Some took up agricultural work. Others engaged in activities associated with irregular resistance, such as economic operations targeting landowners sympathetic to the Franco regime, a practice also pursued by other fugitives or armed local residents. Some took advantage of the area’s underground economy, taking roasted coffee or tobacco from Portugal to Spain and bringing Spanish products, such as bottles of Cruzcampo beer, to this town in the Alentejo region.

In this way, the earned a living and survived. While some lived around Campo Maior and the nearby hamlet of Degolados, most of the refugees built rudimentary dwellings using local materials (stone, adobe or rough masonry gathered from the surrounding land), with roofs made of branches or straw, as can be seen in the photograph The police referred to this settlement, a scarce 200 metres from the Spanish border, as the “Republic of Andorra”, in recognition of the fact that only its inhabitants: armed refugees who had created a self-governing “micro-state” in between the two Iberian dictatorships, had any authority there.

The approaching end of the war in Europe and the fear that the small pockets of fugitives might organise themselves into a broader guerrilla war brought the “Andorran” social experiment to an end. Barely a few days after the failure of Operation Reconquest of Spain (19–24 October 1944)—the guerrilla invasion of the Aran Valley promoted by the Communist Party of Spain - Salazar’s Portuguese police forces and their Francoist counterparts decided to liquidate this small republic that had outlived Spain’s Second Republic. 

Following the assault on 13–14 November 1944, they prosecuted 27 Spanish refugees in Portugal, once again shattering their lives. The punishment was particularly harsh for two “Andorrans”, who were executed without trial: Raimundo Duro Bueno, considered the leader of the partisan group, and his mother, Dolores Bueno Resmella.

The ruins of the “Republic of Andorra” still stand near the Spanish border, an imperishable memory of those frustrated dreams.

MBA/XAV