On the 90th anniversary of the 1936 coup that ignited the Spanish Civil War, Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz’s testimony brings the conflict’s lasting impact on Spanish families into focus. He recently turned 100. His childhood in Madrid was abruptly shattered when machine-gun fire during the assault on the Cuartel de la Montaña reached his home near Plaza de España. Forced to flee, his family joined thousands of others scattered across Europe to escape violence and repression.
The Sánchez-Albornoz family’s ordeal began on July 18, 1936, when illness and the war’s rapid advance derailed plans to reunite in Lisbon. Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz, a historian and former minister, had just been appointed Spain’s ambassador to Portugal. Shifting front lines and closed borders complicated the family’s journey to safety, taking them from Madrid to Alicante, then by ship to Portugal and later into exile in France. In Lisbon, Claudio faced death threats from fascist sympathizers. Portugal’s government supported the Francoist uprising and expelled him months later.
Exile in France brought new challenges. The scale of the flight was immense: around 450,000 Republican civilians and soldiers crossed into France between January 28 and February 10, 1939, mainly through La Jonquera and Portbou. Many were confined in makeshift camps on the beaches of Roussillon in harsh winter conditions. Roughly half of those who crossed did not return to Spain, information from figures presented by La Vanguardia in its reporting on the Museu Memorial de l’Exili and the Memorial de Rivesaltes. The Sánchez-Albornoz family’s experience formed part of a displacement that swept up combatants as well as families, officials, intellectuals and children.
As Franco’s regime consolidated power, hopes for a quick return collapsed. The Nazi occupation of France brought further danger: Francoist authorities sent lists of Republican exiles to the Gestapo. Claudio narrowly avoided arrest after receiving a warning, while others, including Lluís Companys and Julián Zugazagoitia, were not as fortunate. The family was forced to separate again. Claudio eventually reached Argentina after a complex journey through Marseille, Algiers, Casablanca and Rio de Janeiro.
Argentina became the center of Claudio’s life in exile for more than four decades. He founded the Instituto de Historia de España in Buenos Aires and served as president of the Spanish Republican government in exile from 1962 to 1971. He briefly visited Spain in 1976 and returned permanently in August 1983, settling in Ávila. He died the following year. His trajectory shows how Republican exiles built academic and political institutions abroad while remaining connected to a country they could not safely return to.
Back in Spain, defeat brought severe consequences. The family’s property was confiscated by the Tribunal de Responsabilidades Políticas, and purges swept through institutions such as the University of Madrid, where nearly half the staff were dismissed. The broader postwar system extended military jurisdiction to civilians, political parties, unions and legal entities, providing mechanisms for political punishment alongside institutional purges. Nicolás, whose father had been rector, came under suspicion and joined the clandestine Federación Universitaria Escolar (FUE), which resisted the regime’s control over academic life. A silver-nitrate slogan calling for a free university, a symbolic act of defiance, remained visible on the faculty building for years, a silent protest against repression.
Repression soon became personal. After FUE leaders were arrested, Nicolás was detained and sentenced to six years in prison by a military court. He was transferred to the Valle de los Caídos and forced to work on Franco’s mausoleum before escaping in a dramatic flight that later inspired the film Los años bárbaros. His father, still in Argentina, campaigned for his release. Nicolás regained his freedom after the escape and reunited with his family years later.
Nicolás later returned to public life in democratic Spain, serving as director of the Instituto Cervantes. In October 1992, he appeared before the Congress’s Foreign Affairs Committee to seek increased funding for the institution amid a proposed or threatened cut of 500 million pesetas. The episode marked a striking generational shift: a son forced into exile and prison under Francoism was now addressing Spain’s parliament as a leader of its cultural institutions.
The legacy of the Civil War and dictatorship continues to shape Spain’s political field. As the country marks the anniversary, disputes over historical memory remain contentious. The Partido Popular has renewed its pledge to repeal the Law of Historical Memory, while Vox, its coalition partner in several regions, openly challenges the characterization of the dictatorship as a dark period. These arguments echo the unresolved wounds described by Sánchez-Albornoz, whose memoirs argue that confronting the past is impressive to healing a divided society. Museums in Catalonia and southern France preserve testimony, documents and personal objects from the 1939 exodus, linking individual family histories to the mass displacement that reshaped generations.
Spain’s struggle with its history is not unique. Across Europe, the legacy of 20th-century conflicts continues to influence politics, identity and public debate. The experience of families like the Sánchez-Albornoz, marked by exile, loss and ability to recover, shows the personal costs behind historical events. The annual San Fermín festival in Pamplona, with its own history of risk and controversy, offers another lens on how tradition and conflict intersect in Spanish society and on the country’s complex relationship with its past, as seen in the recent report on the Jandilla bull run.
