A large proportion of the first wave of refugees—up to 440,000 in France according to an official report dated March 1939 [1]—initially faced harsh living conditions, which worsened because of the outbreak of World War II.

Also among them were thousands of relatives and civilians, along with a significant number of children, intellectuals, artists, scientists, teachers, and skilled professionals, which was a further determining factor in the process of rebuilding the country as a consequence of the conflict.

[2][3] Over the years, the internal political evolution in Spain and the gradual process of reconciliation, which culminated in the period of the Spanish Transition and the establishment of democracy, slowly allowed for the return of the exiles.

However, there were also many who, due to their degree of integration, decided to remain in the countries that had granted them asylum and where they later met other Spaniards who had arrived either as emigrants for economic reasons since the 1950s or who were part of a new wave of exiles: those persecuted by the dictatorship until 1975.

The first displacements of refugees and exiles took place during the first months of the war—especially in the period from August to December 1936—marked by episodes of systematic violence against the civilian population, both because of ideologically motivated repression by the rebel forces and by the supporters of the social revolution, as well as the advance of military operations.

[12] The military operations carried out on the Northern front, which saw Francoist units advance from Biscay towards Santander in the spring of 1937, brought about a new wave of thousands of exiles, a significant number of whom were children, this time exclusively republicans, to Bordeaux, La Rochelle, and Lorient.

Thus, on 21 May 1937, nearly 4,000 Basque children left Santurtzi on board the steamship Habana [es] (which had capacity for 400 passengers), bound for the English port of Southampton.

[13][14][15] Months later, Arthur Hinsley, cardinal and archbishop-prelate of Westminster, demonstrated the pro-Franco attitude of the English Catholic hierarchy when he publicly supported the deportation of Basque refugee children back to Spain.

A few weeks before the end of the war, the Valière report, carried out at the request of the French government, estimated that by 9 March 1939 there were about 440,000 refugees in France, of whom 170,000 were women, children, and elderly persons, 220,000 soldiers and militiamen, 40,000 invalids, and 10,000 wounded.

[19][24] The southwestern French departments, close to Spain, were the ones that received the largest number of refugees, with heavy Spanish immigration in the cities of Bordeaux and Toulouse, where there were Spaniards already living.

French authorities were overwhelmed by the mascaret humain [d]—in the words of Interior Minister Albert Sarraut[26]—of La Retirada and thus regrouped the refugees in "control" or "sorting" camps at the border.

These consisted of a sandy area enclosed by barbed-wire fences, without even a roof to take shelter under, and surrounded by Senegalese soldiers armed with machine guns and rifles.

Between 1942 and 1943, a total of 26,000 Spanish workers from the GTE and others were sent, as part of the Service du travail obligatoire (STO), to the projects of the Organisation Todt on the Atlantic front.

In late 1942, many joined the Resistance, the Maquis, and the Free French Forces, and even contributed in deciphering the German Enigma cryptographic code (the team of Antonio Camazón [es]).

[28][49] Facing the problem of Spanish refugees, the French government began negotiations with Latin American countries to take them in, but received only three positive responses at first: Mexico, Uruguay, and Chile.

[53] In February 1939, Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas agreed to receive a part of the Spanish exiles, following the example of Chile, which had previously chartered the SS Winnipeg.

[57] One of the best-known episodes was the voyage of the ocean liner SS Massilia, which set sail [es] on 19 October 1939 from La Rochelle and arrived in Buenos Aires on 5 November.

[59] These included: painter and stage designer Gregorio (Gori) Muñoz, feminist writer Elena Fortún, politician and economist Pere Coromines i Montanya, journalist Amparo Alvajar, among many others.

Physicist Blas Cabrera went to Mexico, as well as writers Tomás Segovia, Emilio Prados, Max Aub, and José Bergamín.

Writer José Gaos, who settled in Mexico, created the neologism transtierro [h] to refer to this emigration that transformed into an advanced integration in Latin American cultures, as a reaction to the more commonly used term destierro.

[73] Most of these personalities pursued academic careers at institutions such as Middlebury College[74] or Columbia University, like Laura de los Ríos Giner [es].

Many remained in post-Soviet Russia, others managed to flee—like Valentín González, after having been interned in Vorkutlag, a Gulag labor camp—and yet others scattered or died fighting for their new homeland (such as the case of Dolores Ibárruri's son) during the Second World War.

[79] As Franco's troops advanced, the Republicans from Castellón and Alicante had to escape by sea on board more than forty ships, such as HMS Galatea and the SS Stanbrook,[80] which set course for North Africa carrying women, men, and children in inhumane conditions.

The Francoist police persecuted the opposition and purged villages,[89] causing a situation that historians refer to as the posguerra [j] period—from 1938 to the early sixties, during which exiles continued to flee from the regime.

This brain drain impoverished the cultural life in post-war Spain, but enriched that of the host countries:[92] Mexico (thanks to the support of President Lázaro Cárdenas), Argentina, and the United States, among others.

Some of these intellectuals included: Biologists Physicists Chemists Mathematicians Engineers Astronomers Oceanographers Writers Filmmakers Artists Historians Philologists Pedagogues Philosophers Essayists In Spain, three exhibitions marked the beginning of the commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the Republican exile.

[96] In the French capital, the Council of Paris voted unanimously to dedicate a garden and a street to the memory of Federica Montseny[97] and Neus Català,[98] respectively.