Tour 2: Charlie Donnelly and the Battle of Jarama

This tour about Charlie Donnelly and the battle of Jarama is covered in Dr David Mathieson’s fully illustrated guide to the battlefield sites of the Spanish civil war around Madrid.  Click on the icon to order your paperback or kindle copy.

In February 1937 General Franco’s Nationalist army launched a massive onslaught on Republican lines in the Jarama valley to the south east of Madrid.  Their objective was to cut the road between the capital and the important Mediterranean sea port of Valencia.  The highway was the capital’s umbilical cord—vital supplies of food, fuel and munitions passed along the road from the port to the besieged capital.  The Nationalist offensive was one of the most important of the war.  Had it not been for the extrordinary heroism of volunteers from the International Brigades who fought alongside Spanish Republicans, Madrid would undoubtedly have fallen.

Tour Itinerary

This Madrid tour will take us just outside the city to the beautful valley of Jarama , scene of a bloody battle in 1937.  Some 40 minutes outside Madrid, stops include some of the places which have entered into the legend of the battle and the memory of the International Brigades – the Cookhouse, the sunken road and Suicide Hill which was valiantly defended by British and Irish volunteers (above).

Amongst the quiet of the olive groves, we will walk to the spot where Charlie Donnelly is thought to have been killed alongside many of his companions from the American Abraham Lincoln Brigade.  Our walk will also take in some extensive Republican trench emplacements and the memorial to those who died at Jarama.

This unusual walking tour includes lunch at a local restaurant, the Meson El Cid, which has one of the very few museums devoted to the Spanish civil war in Madrid. The museum is a fascinating cornucopia, housing hundreds of artifacts which have been retrieved from the battlefield of Jarama over the years.

 

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The remains of bunkers and dug-outs can still to be seen in the

Jarama valley today

More about the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Charlie Donnelly and the Battle of Jarama

In mid-February 1937 the Republicans launched a major counter offensive at Jarama. The International Brigades were once again in the thick of the fighting and this time the American volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade were in the vanguard. The Lincoln’s suffered extensive casualties before the offensive was abandoned and amongst the dead lay the young Irish poet Charlie Donnelly.

Charlie Donnelly (above) was born in County Tyrone in 1914. Both a radical and a rebel, Charlie moved to London and joined the International Brigades in the winter of 1936. Like many Irish volunteers, Donnelly preferred to fight alongside the Americans rather than the British and he was attached to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. When his unit came under fire Donnelly was killed instantly, aged 22.  His body has never been recovered.