My War in Two Armies: Part 7 of 10 - The British Consulate in Barcelona

The long train crawled into Barcelona station at about 9pm. I waited on the platform until the crowd had passed the barrier, just in case there should be another identity check. When all seemed fairly quiet, I made my way out of the station without any trouble. Outside the station was a wide avenue leading to the town centre, but before proceeding any further I bought a cup of coffee and a couple of cakes at a stall by the pavement and this only left me with a few cents in change. Feeling somewhat refreshed, I walked down the avenue thinking that it was now too late to go to the British Consulate and in any case I did not know the address.

I went on further hoping to find an inexpensive hotel to spend the night and hoped that I should have sufficient change left to pay for the room. It was already quite dark, but there was no black-out in this modern and pleasant city. There was plenty of activity in the streets, especially in the centre of Barcelona with its large buildings and wide boulevards. Feeling that I was making no useful progress in finding accommodation, I asked a boy in the street if he could direct me to a small hotel and gave him some small change for his trouble. I took the direction in which he pointed and found myself in a big open square surrounded by tall buildings and onto which converged a number of broad thoroughfares. This appeared to be the business part and West End of Barcelona, not the place to find a cheap hotel.

Not wanting to waste any more time, I stopped an hotel page boy and asked if he knew of an hotel where I could spend one night, as the following morning I intended to go to the British Consulate. The boy was most sympathetic and helpful. He took the trouble to accompany me to a large hotel where he knew the reception clerk who spoke English. I explained the position and the clerk kindly gave me the address of a small boarding house close by. The page boy took me as far and made the inquiry for me but he was told that all rooms were fully booked that night.

A man standing nearby overheard the conversation and immediately offered his assistance. I was suspicious at first but also realised that I was not in a favourable situation to refuse his offer of help and could only hope that he did not intend taking me to a police station. I regretted that I had not found the address of the consulate from a telephone directory before venturing into the town as I did.
The man however meant well for he telephoned the consulate and the reply was that I could go there straight away. There was great excitement and the man, who spoke a little English, offered to take me there. We lost no time in leaving the boarding house for the direction of the consulate, the page boy was also eager to come with us.

The consulate was only a short distance away and when we arrived we found there were two Spanish policemen guarding the entrance. The man explained to them that I was a British subject and that I was expected by the consulate, which knew of my presence. The police asked to see my papers and I showed them my emergency certificate. They satisfied themselves that I was the owner of the certificate from the photograph but were doubtful about my name Vila, which they remarked was a Catalonian surname commonplace in Barcelona. In spite of this one of the policemen entered the consulate presumably with a view to confirming my story. The other policeman waited outside with me and my two friends, all of us anxious to know the result. The consulate offices were on the second floor of the building, but had closed for the night except for one official on duty until the staff returned in the morning.

After a short while the first policeman reappeared and handed me 15 pesetas from the consulate to pay for the hotel and gave me the message that I was to return the following morning at 10 o’clock. This was of course a great comfort to me, both the money and the promise of some real help the following day could not have arrived at a more opportune time. I was also very lucky that the police displayed leniency and asked no awkward questions.

It was about 11.30pm when I and my two companions left the consulate. We soon found a small hotel nearby where they reserved a room for me; we then parted company. I was grateful to them both for their valuable assistance. The man seemed eager to help and explained that he was a republican and opposed to the fascist regime in Spain. That night I enjoyed a comfortable sleep after giving myself a good clean up.

The next day was the 22nd October. I left the hotel in time to arrive at the British Consulate at 10am as arranged. The door was open and the Spanish police did not intercept. I went to the office upstairs and explained who I was to one of the officials who was already informed of my visit the previous night. I received a very warm welcome and it was strange to find myself among English-speaking people. I had some difficulty at first in expressing myself clearly. I felt very much an alien and realised how out of touch I was after nearly two years away from home. The walls of the consulate were hung with unfamiliar war-time posters, some showing Winston Churchill, a picture of the King and various notices.

The first thing I was asked to do was to write a report, giving details about myself and how I reached Barcelona. I also had to compete three forms giving further personal information. After these formalities I was shown into another room and given 50 pesetas and some cigarettes. Here I met four other British subjects recently arrived from France, two of them were civilians and two were RAF pilot officers; there was also a Polish RAF pilot.

I was informed that the next day I would be taken by car to Madrid along with the three RAF pilots. My accommodation for the night was arranged and I was taken by car driven by a Spanish chauffeur employed by the consulate at whose parents’ home I was to stay until the following morning. I was delighted with these arrangements as I never expected that progress would be so fast. There were one or two other escapees in the house with whom I soon made friends and we were given some good square meals.

I was woken up the next morning at 5 o’clock and driven to the house of one of the vice-consuls in Barcelona. Here I met up again with the three RAF men who had spent the night there. We were given breakfast and immediately afterwards the four of us were taken in the consulate car to a place in town where the vice-consul took over from the chauffeur for the drive from Barcelona to Madrid.

It was then about 6.30am and the journey to Madrid was a long one although the vice-consul was a fast driver whenever road conditions permitted it. We had to cover some 500 miles, passing through Saragossa. We stopped at an isolated place in the country for a sandwich lunch and two or three other times for petrol. We arrived at the British Embassy in Madrid at 6.30pm. The embassy was a large solid building with a Spanish style interior courtyard big enough for a lawn and a few trees. At the other end was a large garage and hall which had been converted into a dormitory to accommodate the constant arrivals of escapees - not all of them British - from France. As soon as we arrived we were greeted and surrounded by a group of about sixteen other men, most of them British who, like ourselves, had arrived at the embassy by various means and had luckily escaped the police. They were eager to hear about our experiences and who we were. After this preliminary exchange of news, we were allocated an army-type bed each in the dormitory and issued with blankets.

We were indeed a very mixed crowd and I learnt that we would all be going to Gibraltar for repatriation to England, but no one knew when this would take place. It appeared that the journey to Gibraltar would be made by train or by coach in parties of about 20 men and that other arrivals could be expected from time to time. Those who were caught by the Spanish police were taken to various prisons in Spain, to end up eventually at the camp of Miranda, near Madrid, where living conditions were bad. The embassy, however, sent Red Cross parcels of food and clothing regularly to help the men at the Miranda camp and would obtain their release and safe removal to the embassy after they had served a sentence, varying from one to two months, for illegally entering the country. This procedure applied not only to the British but also to men of other nationalities who wanted to get to England.

At the time I was at the embassy, the bulk of the residents were made up of British servicemen including RAF personnel (fighter and bomber crews) who had had to bale out of their aircraft over enemy occupied territory such as northern France and Belgium. There were remnants of the British Expeditionary Force, in particular the Scottish Highland Division, who had been living in hiding with Belgian or French farmers, and who had decided to try to return to England. There were also one or two Polish RAF pilots, four Belgian ex-servicemen, and one British civilian who had lived all his life in France and could not speak any English, but was eager to join the RAF. In all we were about twenty, sufficient we thought to make up a party to travel by coach to Gibraltar. Arrangements had to be made by the embassy to obtain the necessary authority from the Spanish government for our transit across from Madrid to Gibraltar, and this of course took time.

We were naturally not allowed outside the embassy and had to remain within the buildings and grounds. Games, books and our own chores helped to pass the time away and the embassy also provided the occasional cinema show. The British Ambassador at the time was Sir Samuel Hoare and he and Lady Hoare entertained us one evening to a sherry party. I spent 28 days at the embassy, during which we were fed, clothed and given cigarettes and some Spanish money to buy fruit, wine, etc which we could obtain through Spanish members of the embassy staff.

On the 20th November 1941, about 18 of us left the embassy by coach for Gibraltar. There was great excitement as we left at 9.30 that morning and were once again on the road. Our journey took us through central Spain. Travelling south we reached the small town of Cordoba that evening at 9 o’clock. We stayed at the Hotel Victoria. We spent the whole of the next day in Cordoba and were permitted to take walks in the town and visit cafés. After another night at the hotel in Cordoba we resumed our journey the following morning at 7 o’clock passing through Seville and San Fernando before reaching Gibraltar, where we finally arrived at 7 o’clock in the evening of the 22nd November. During our journey through Spain we were accompanied by a Spanish policeman in plain clothes, who left us at the frontier at La Linea.

We had at last arrived in British territory and were free, but Gibraltar was an important base crowded with service personnel of all sorts and a reduced local population. Many of the workers came over everyday from the small neighbouring town of La Linea on the Spanish side of the frontier and had to pass through the customs twice a day. On leaving the coach we were taken to an office where we in turn had a short interview with an intelligence sergeant who had a few questions to put to us concerning ourselves and where we had come from. We were then taken to our billets: the military and civilians to the “Spanish Pavilion” in the main street; the rest of the party being RAF personnel were taken elsewhere. The Spanish Pavilion was a transit depot for the Army where new arrivals were accommodated until they could be sent to England. The same evening we were given a medical examination and the officer in charge of the depot gave us a short welcoming speech in both English and French (for the benefit of the four Belgians who were with us).

The following morning I was asked to go for another interview with the same intelligence sergeant who I had seen the previous evening. This time the interview lasted half an hour, during which I gave him fuller details about myself, how I had spent the past two years in France and about my journey from Paris to Barcelona.

During my stay in Gibraltar I received a weekly allowance of 15s 0d from the Colonial Office and was housed and fed by the Army. My status was that of a British subject, and together with two or three other British civilians we stayed the whole time at Spanish Pavilion with the soldiers who were now back in uniform. The airmen who had travelled with us were sent to the RAF camp and there were separate quarters for the foreign soldiers and civilians who were sorted out according to their nationality. All of us new arrivals and others who had arrived earlier in Gibraltar were waiting to be sent to England on the next passenger carrying ship. Some of the RAF air-crew were, I understood, flown back to England.

Most of us who were waiting had nothing special to do and we were allowed to go about the town and around the Rock outside the prohibited areas. There was much of interest to be seen and the view from half way up the Rock was magnificent. The airstrip was another place where some of us spent many hours, watching the various types of aircraft take off and land. Although it was mid-winter the climate was warm and sunny most of the time. There was good bathing on the eastern Mediterranean side of the peninsula.

While I was in Gibraltar I took the opportunity of sending cable messages and letters home and received replies for the first time since I had left Marseilles. I was in Gibraltar altogether 38 days, which included Christmas, on the occasion of which a special Christmas dinner was served by army officers to the soldiers and the small number of British civilians staying at the Spanish Pavilion.

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