Next month, Gwent will remember the Basque children who came to Wales after fleeing the Spanish Civil War. Mike Buckingham spoke to a woman with bitter memories of a bloody and cruel conflict

AS the bombs fell on her home city of Bilbao, Josefina Savery remembers the clamour and confusion as lorries and ambulances rushed the injured to the hospitals' first-aid posts.

"I was a young girl and knew little of the reasons for the war, but I remember the bombings and the aeroplanes, although what happened to us was not as bad as at Guernica, where the planes struck on a market day.

"That was truly terrible."

The bombing of Guernica, a small market town, but one of immense cultural importance to Basques, outraged the world.

Pablo Picasso channelled his rage and pity into his painting called simply, Guernica, a stark and impassioned condemnation of total war.

In her elegant and concise English the woman who came to Wales as 14-year-old Josefina Alvarez recalls her last moments in Bilbao and the last sight she had of her father as the ship carrying her and thousands of other refugees set sail for Britain.

"I was taken to the train station, where I said goodbye to my mother and father, who were both teachers, and my father said to me in Spanish, 'Learn English'.

"That was the last I ever saw of him. He was a supporter of the republic but not an activist. He was taken to prison by Franco's forces and simply disappeared."

The memory of the terrible events in Spain, when the horrors of modern aerial bombardment were, for the first time, launched upon a civilian population, still brings tears.

"I can forgive, but I can not forget. There was a reporter for the London Times in Guernica who saw it all. The Nationalists tried to say there was a strategic point to the bombing, but there was not."

Civil war broke out in Spain in the summer of 1936, when a group of senior army officers led by General Francisco Franco rose against the democratically elected centre-Left government.

Those living in the Basque country, whether ethnically Basque or, like the young Josefina Alvarez, Spanish-speaking, were to suffer for their adherence to the republic.

The bombing of Guernica and other Basque cities, including Bilbao, was carried out by German or Italian bombers, the axis powers having allied themselves with Franco.

While British foreign policy was to stand aloof, large sections of the public, especially on the Left, were both enraged by the aggression of Franco's right-wing forces and touched by the plight of innocent children caught up in the war.

Nowhere was support for the beleaguered republic greater than in South Wales, from where scores of men left to fight in the International Brigades against Franco, and financial support given by miners' lodges, student unions, trade union branches and individuals indignant about what was seen as unwarranted aggression.

"The ship that took us to Southampton was organised by such well-wishers. We were not frightened on the sea voyage but many of us were terribly sick," Mrs Savery recalls. "When we got to Southampton we were taken to a tented camp at Stoneham, near Eastleigh in Hampshire.

"It was May, and I do not remember the weather as being all that different from Bilbao, but I was surprised to see detached houses, which were not at all like the flats we were used to. My feelings were of adventure but also, of course, of homesickness."

Stoneham was the holding centre for Basque children prior to their distribution to the various 'colonies', as places like Cambria House in Caerleon, which was to be her destination, were called.

"There was a reception committee when we arrived at Caerleon, and pictures in the Argus. We were not afraid because nothing is so bad when you have come from a war zone. We were treated well by everyone we met, but I remember that at first we were not allowed to leave Cambria House.

"There was a Welsh matron in charge who had been in charge of an orphanage, but we were not orphans. Then Mrs Maria Fernandez came, and things changed.

"From then on there were open days when people could come to see us, and the boys had an excellent football team and there was mixing with local children. We received great kindness from the Miners' Federation especially, and from Cardiff University. There was a real sense of outrage in Britain about what had happened to the Basques."

Within months of the Francoist victory in 1939, war came to Britain and Cambria House was requisitioned by the army. Those Basque children who had not returned to Spain were sent to Pendragon House at number 18, Cross Street, Caerleon.

For Josefina, who had elected to stay, the words of her father rang in her ears. After attending school in Bristol she won a place at Birmingham University to read English.

It was while at university that she met Granville Savery, whom she married in 1947 and by whom she has two sons.

Although it is only a few miles as the crow flies from the Savery's home in a quiet corner of Risca, she has never been back to Pendragon House, although she will be present on October 17 this year when the Basque Children of '37 Association unveil a plaque there.

No war is as bitter as a civil war, and in the Spanish conflict there were atrocities on both sides. Since the death of General Franco in 1975 many wounds have healed.

About those years, Josefina Savery is thoughtful.

"One can forgive, but not forget. I am pleased that young Spaniards do not wish to dig up the past. What is the point, after all, of a vendetta?

"The memory of those days will always be with me, though.

"Sometimes my younger brother, who we call Paco and who was with me in the war before returning to Bilbao, comes to Gwent and, driving on the motorway, looks over towards Caerleon and says 'Do you know? There is the finest village in the world'."