POLITICAL WALLS AND BRIDGES OF SOLIDARITY IN THE SPANISH-PORTUGUESE BORDER: THE REFUGEES OF SPANISH CIVIL WAR IN BARRANCOS (1936)

During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) the Portuguese-Spanish border was an instrument of protection and resistance, an imaginary line that demarcated the life and death of thousands, surviving Salazar's reinforcement of control and surveillance. The article analyses the cross-border solidarities that took place during the war, questioning the opposition between the logic of the State and the logic of the local populations (in regards to the border), electing as its empirical and historiographical object, the case of refugee fluxes to the Portuguese village of Barrancos. Methodologically we seek to intertwine documentary sources, oral sources and field work conducted between 2006 and 2010 in Barrancos (Baixo Alentejo), and in the neighboring Spanish villages of Encinasola (Andalusia) and Oliva de la Frontera (Extremadura). The analytical approach to historical memory, borders and power relations, explains the strategies of resistance of social actors, defining them as a cultural praxis conformed throughout the historical process.