5th annual Jarama commemoration
This year’s 5th annual Jarama commemoration will take place during the weekend of Friday 17th to Sunday 19th February. As well as the 5th Jarama Memorial Walk, which will take place on Saturday 18th, there will be other events over the weekend.
On Friday 17th, Hugh Purcell, whose work on Tom Wintringham, The Last English Revolutionary: A Biography of Tom Wintringham 1898-1949 (Sutton Publishing, 2004) has been revised and extended for re-publication in May, will be offering the talk ‘Wintringham: Love and War in Spain’, at 18:30 in the CAUM, Plaza Tirso de Molina, 8. The timing of Hugh Purcell´s talk is particularly fortunate, as Tom Wintringham’s own book English Captain (Un Capitán Inglés, Akron, 2009) has recently been translated into Spanish.
Preceeding this talk there will be a short presentation on Christopher Caudwell by David Margolis.
The Jarama Memorial March on the site of the battle will take place on Saturday 18th (leaving at 0900 from Hotel Agumar, Calle Infanta Cristina, 7). On the battlefield we will follow in the footsteps of the XV International Brigade and see some of the main landmarks of the battle of Jarama. During the walk Nils Wintringham will read his grandfather’s great poem ‘Monument’. After a relaxed 3 hour walk we will go to Morata de Tajuña for lunch at the Mesón El Cid, where we will also be able to visit the museum set up by Goyo Salcedo which has a display of artifacts from the battlefield.
On Sunday morning there will also be the opportunity to go to Ciudad Universitaria to visit this other key battlefield in the defence of Madrid in the winter of 1936-1937, as well as to see the memorial recently inaugurated to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the formation of the International Brigades (visit starting at 10:30 from Ciudad Universitaria).
The cost for the coach to the battlefield and restaurant in Morata de Tajuña on Saturday will be 12-15 euros per person and the lunch at the Mesón El Cid 25 euros.
For further information and to book a place on the bus, at the lunch on Saturday, and/or on the walking tour in the Ciudad Universitaria on Sunday, please contact: jarama2012@gmail.com
