The Spanish Republican exile in Tunisia is the story of refuge sought by sailors from the Republic’s fleet. Faced with the debacle that occurred at the end of the Spanish Civil War, they decided, under the leadership of Admiral Buiza, to sail towards North Africa until they reached the Tunisian port of Bizerte. In all, there were 4093 people in their group, including 122 civilians, 21 women and 4 children. The men were initially interned in the Meheri-Zebbeus camp, near Meknassy, in the interior of Tunisia, but half of them decided to be repatriated to Spain, where their fate was uncertain.

However, the story of the remaining 1700 was one of endurance, having gone through World War Two, one of the most dramatic scenes of which occurred in Tunisia. They continued on with varying fortunes until long after the country’s independence.

Some were lucky enough to live a singular experience in the agricultural colony of Chambi-Kasserine; others, judged “undesirable” because of their political and human non-conformity, ended up working in internment camps, initially in Tunisia and later in Algeria. The vast majority, around 900 of them, some of whom had been reunited with their families, grew integrated into civilian life in a country struggling for its independence. First under the French protectorate and then after independence, these 900 Spaniards continued to long for a time when they could return to their country, which only much later became a reality for some of them.

Looking back at this history, some figures will be remembered because they were especially unique, like David Gasca and Ángel Brihuega, who formed a sort of Republican “consulate” to provide for those 900 refugees, recognized by the French and Tunisians, while others like Elodia Zaragoza Jover ended up fully integrating into Tunisian life without forgetting their Spanish and Republican roots. Then there were still others for whom “dying in exile (meant) dying in oblivion,” the title of a short-subject film by journalist Javier Martín, to be screened along with talks by Tunisian historian and Hispanist Bechir Yezidi and a professor from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Bernabé López García.

The event will be broadcast live on our YouTube channel.


Bernabé López García, a department chair and honorary professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, specializes in the history and social movements of the Arab world and contemporary North Africa. He has authored numerous works, the most notable of which include: Marruecos político. Cuarenta años de procesos electorales (1960-2000) (Political Morocco: Forty years of elections [1960-2000], CIS-Siglo XXI, 2000), Marruecos y España. Una historia contra toda lógica (Morocco and Spain: A history that defies logic, RD Editores-Historia, 2007), Orientalismo e ideología colonial en el arabismo español (1840-1917) (Orientalism and Colonial Ideology in Spanish Arabism [1840-1917], Granada, 2011), España, el Mediterráneo y el mundo arabomusulmán. Diplomacia e historia (Spain, the Mediterranean and the Arab-Muslim World, Barcelona, 2011).

Bechir Yezidi is a researcher at the lnstitut Supérieur d’Histoire du Mouvement National and a professor of Contemporary History at La Manouba University in Tunisia. He specializes in the relations between the Arab and European worlds, and more specifically between Spain and the Maghreb. In recent years, he has devoted his work to studying the Spanish Civil War and the exile of Republicans in Tunisia, which is the main subject of his book El exilio republicano en Túnez (Republican Exile in Tunisia).