BCA'37 UK - The Association for the UK Basque Children

Association Notices

News, Events & Reports

New Sculpture unveiling at Surrey County Council HQ, Reigate

BCA'37 UK will be contributing a speaker to this event (Carmen Kilner) relating to the niños de la guerra of Surrey.

Surrey UNISON, in collaboration with Rob MacDonald (sculptor, artist and historical memory campaigner) have worked together on a memorial installation to be sited at Surrey County Council HQ at Woodhatch Place, Reigate, in the UNISON memorial garden. This will be the culmination of a long partnership between Surrey UNISON and the Solidarity Park memorial and annual anti-fascist festival in Malgrat De Mar, Catalonia, Spain. Previous Surrey UNISON Branch Secretary, Ian MacDonald, is even remembered on a plaque on the Solidarity Park site. https://solidaritypark.com/about/ The installation is called SOLIDARITY SURREY and is dedicated to the memory of the international volunteers who travelled to Spain to fight fascism in the 1930s. In particular it is dedicated to the trade unionist and artist, Felicia Browne. She was the only British woman combatant and the first British volunteer to die in the Spanish Civil War. Felicia was from Surrey and her body was never recovered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicia_Browne The installation will be unveiled on International Workers Memorial Day, 28th April, at an event from 12-1pm, where trade union members will be joined by the sculptor, by members of Felicia Brown's family, representatives from the International Brigades Memorial Trust (IBMT) and representatives from the 'Basque Children of 37' group. This group supported hundreds of refugee Basque children during the Spanish Civil War to settle in the UK – with a high number based in Surrey.

Winifred Nicholson and the Brampton Basque children's hostel

Article by Dr Rob David — Paintings by the childen

Towards the end of 2024 descendants of the Cumberland artist Winifred Nicholson (1893-1981) deposited eight pictures at Carlisle Archive Centre which had been painted by the Basque child refugees at the Brampton hostel between 1937 and 1939 …

Winifred Nicholson and the Brampton Basque children's hostel — by Dr Rob David

All of the photo scan be found in our gallery here.

"Memorias del exilio"

Un cómic para honrar la memoria de los niños vascos exiliados en la Guerra Civil "Memorias del exilio" recupera las historias en primera persona de los menores obligados a abandonar España en 1937 Léelo en El Pais ….
[In Spanish and may require a subscription to El Pais to access the full article]

"In 2019, Begoña Garrido (Bilbao, 40 years old) was doing her thesis, with a scholarship from the British University of Reading, on the daily life of Basque women during the Franco regime. She did more than 30 lengthy in-person interviews with older women, and brought together several focus groups. Between coffee and coffee, between memory and remember …" A short summary in English can be read here …

The Man of War

I was recently contacted by our old friend Bernardo Fernández, former Councillor for Employment and Social Affairs in the Spanish Embassy, London, telling us of a new, posthumously published novel (in Spanish), that includes the experience of the niños exile:

Until his retirement and return to Spain Bernardo was one of our staunchest allies and supporters. He gave immeasurable help to our Association in its early days. The association owes him a tremendous debt of gratitude. I still keep in touch with Bernardo and he still follows our activities. Carmen Kilner

El hombre de la guerra

Nuestro viejo amigo Bernardo Fernández, antiguo Cónsul de España para Asuntos Culturales en Londres, se puso recientemente en contacto conmigo para hablarnos de una nueva novela, publicada póstumamente (en español), que recoge la experiencia del exilio de los Niños:

Hasta su jubilación y regreso a España, Bernardo fue uno de nuestros más firmes aliados y partidarios. Prestó una ayuda inconmensurable a nuestra Asociación en sus comienzos. La Asociación tiene con él una enorme deuda de gratitud. Sigo en contacto con Bernardo y él sigue nuestras actividades. Carmen Kilner

Euskara Classes

We receive occasional requests about learning the Basque language, so we are happy to inform you of this course from the London Basque Society.

The Guernica Children documentary on our YouTube channel

The English Version can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/LSNe_BMPhDI La versión en español puede verse aquí: https://youtu.be/CuW_BAqZcTY

'Happy and Safe': The Basque Child Refugees in Cumberland and Westmorland 1937 - 1939

by Rob David

Rob has been studying, writing about, and lecturing on the experiences of refugees in Cumbria for many years. Now he turns his focus on the Basque Children who arrived in the North West in 1937. He has had full access to the archives of the Charles and Lady Cecilia Roberts who brought into existence a colony of 100 children in Brampton near Carlisle and a satellite for 25 children at Ambleside. Rob describes the lives of the children and the impressive range of people who stepped forward to support them both financially and with care and attention …

The book is now available in our shop.

For other recently posted and older notices, click here.

Newsletter / Boletín

From the Archives

Newsletter 12, November 2009

Lecture by Tom Buchanan:
'Personal memory and public history of the Basque children'
By Nicholas Rankin Read the full article here …

… an article you may have missed:

The Basque Child Refugees
in the UK Produced by a group of undergraduate students at Leeds University in 2021 Read the full article here …

From Another Archive:

The experience of Basque refugee children in Swansea in the 1930s By Archives Wales Read the full article here …

More from our own archives:

Names of the Hutton Hall Basque refugee children