Cova Hospital de Santa Llúcia

Useful Information

Location:	T-703, 2, 43372 La Bisbal de Falset, Tarragona. (41.2869656, 0.7170745)
Open:	no restrictions. [2024]
Fee:	free. [2024]
Classification:	Karst Cave
Light:	bring torch
Dimension:
Guided tours:	self guided
Photography:	allowed
Accessibility:	no
Bibliography:	Dr. Douglas Jolly (1941): Field Surgery in Total War,, Hamish Hamilton Medical Books, 1941. Dr. Angela Jackson (2002): British Women and the Spanish Civil War, University of Essex, 2001; 1st ed. London, Routledge, 2002. online Dr. Angela Jackson (2002): Beyond the Battlefield: Testimony, Memory and Remembrance of a Cave Hospital in the Spanish Civil War, Warren & Pell Publishing, 2005. amazon
Address:	Cova Hospital de Santa Llúcia, T-703, 2, 43372 La Bisbal de Falset, Tarragona. Això va Passar, C/. de la Palma nº 13, 43372 LA BISBAL DE FALSET, Tel: +34-977-819-035, Tel: +34-620-860-455 E-mail:
As far as we know this information was accurate when it was published (see years in brackets), but may have changed since then. Please check rates and details directly with the companies in question if you need more recent info.

History

1938	military hospital of the International Brigades installed inside the cave.
25-JUL-1938	republican offensive in the Ebro valley.
1977	after the end of the Franco regime, former patients visited the town in search for the hospital.
1982-1983	cave cleaned and ruins renovated.
JAN-1987	english book about the hospital reaches the municipality.
1991	cave purchased by the municipality from the private owners.
2000	Angela Jackson from Great Britain arrives doing research for her thesis.
2001	thesis of Angela Jackson published under the title British Women and the Spanish Civil War.
2009	unveiling of a plaque in memory of the British medical services personnel who worked in the cave during the Battle of the Ebro.
09-APR-2022	informative panel on the hospital inaugurated.

Description

photography — Cova Hospital de Santa Llúcia, Cataluña, Spain. Public Domain.

Cova Hospital de Santa Llúcia in Catalan, Santa Llúcia leize ospitalea in Basque, and Cueva hospital de Santa Llúcia in Spanish. That's a problem in some areas of Spain where there are several official languages. But as it is in Cataluña, we chose the Catalan version for the listing. The English translation seems quite obvious though, because its always similar terms: Cave Hospital of Santa Llúcia. So there are two parts we have to explain the Hospital part and the Santa Llúcia part.

Let's start with Santa Llúcia, Lucia of Syracuse (283–304). She was a Roman Christian martyr who died during the Diocletianic Persecution. She is venerated in Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, and Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Saint Lucy's Day, her traditional feast day, is on 13 December. There are numerous places in Spain where she is venerated, for example, Barcelona's main Christmas market, the Fira de Santa Llúcia, which is one of the oldest in Europe. There are versions of her legend where her eyes were removed, by her guards or by herself. But when her body was prepared for burial in the family mausoleum it was discovered that her eyes had been miraculously restored. So she became Patron Saint of the blind, and her holy water is reputed to heal eye illness. As the water of the natural spring inside the cave is also said to have the power to cure problems with eyes, Santa Llùcia is the Patron Saint of the cave.

The cave is a huge shelter in conglomerate rock which was formed by the erosion of the river. The cave was used in prehistoric times as a shelter by hunting parties. Remains from the Magdalenian were excavated. During the Middle Ages it was inhabited by hermits, but they left almost no trace. Since then, it was a place of Christian worship. Its size, and the nearby spring made this a very pleasant spot, and it was almost like a natural church.

A military hospital of the International Brigades was installed inside the cave in 1938. The cave of Santa Llúcia was chosen because it offered protection against the air raids of Franco's forces. Another reason was the Battle of the Ebro, the republican offensive took place between July and November 1938. The hospital was built in the immediate vicinity of this battle, only about 15 km to the northeast, and only a few days before it started. It was a level 1 hospital, with 100 beds and 3 operating rooms. Level 1 hospital means that it was installed in a stable and safe place, to be able to treat the seriously injured and accommodate them for at least eight days to avoid the risk of transfers. The hospital had six mobile surgical teams, complete and self-sufficient units with 14 people including head surgeon, assistant surgeon, two anesthetists, nurses, driver and so on. With their own means of transport they were able to quickly and effectively install an operating room wherever needed. The battle was disastrous for the Second Spanish Republic. There was a great number of wounded, and so three mobile surgical teams were moved to the Flix bridge, on the left bank of the Ebro river.

The hospital provided medical help to soldiers wounded in the battle, many of them international brigade members, but also prisoners of war and the civilian population injured by the bombings. The medical staff were volunteers sent by the Spanish Medical Aid Committee from Great Britain. The teams were coordinated by Dr. Len Crome, chief medical officer of the XI and XV International Brigades. The most popular surgeon in the hospital was Dr. Douglas Jolly from New Zealand, who was very skilled and also quite reliable. He returned to Great Britain and wrote a book about surgery in war, published in 1941 it was quite popular during World War II.

The hospital existed only for four months, then it was abandoned, the cave was more or less forgotten. The first visitors to the cave arrived after the end of the Franco regime in 1977, former patients who wanted to see the hospital. The mayor of the town organized the cleaning and renovating of the cave. The municipality, most of them were not born when the hospital existed, actually learned about it form an english book. Some students from Tarragona had been to London and brought a book written in English about British nurses in the Civil War. It contained not only a description of the hospital but also a photograph with a row of beds in the cave. The interest and the number of people interested in the cave increased. The mayor tried to buy the cave to make it a public property, accessible to all, because it was still owned as a private property. Requests for support to both the Central and Regional Governments were not answered, the cave was purchased with money from the municipality and a collection among locals and visitors, who donated most of the 2 million pesetas (€12,000) which were finally paid. The major who was so hard working on making this a memorial tells about his own first visit of the site:

I remember perfectly well when I was first here, it was the summer of 1948, an extremely dry year. On April 7, Franco had decreed the end of the state of war, I was only five years old and I came with an uncle to fetch water with the mule from the spring that springs there. He was the one who explained to me that there was a hospital here during the war where soldiers were treated and died there. 10 years had passed since the Battle of the Ebro and what caught my attention the most in the Cave was the smell, a smell that had nothing to do with the surroundings. Neither the forest, nor the olive trees, almond trees and vineyards could disguise that strong, penetrating smell. From then on, I always associated that smell with the heat and intense and whitish light of the August heatwave. That whole set, had left me an image and a flair for war that I would no longer remove from my subconscious. When we were already bigger, playing, we made our way here, I was shocked, especially when, when we scratched one of those slopes, when we found the remains of amputations.
53 years had to pass until, in September 2001, "The Volunter", magazine of the American brigade members of the Lincoln Brigade, published a report by Ángela Jackson about the La Cova hospital. Winifred Bates, a British woman who worked there said:
"It is so difficult to make a man and so easy to send him to death! I will never forget the Ebro. If you were to wander around the Cave, you could smell the smell of death"
The smell of death! This, this was the smell I smelled and I couldn't figure out what it was. The rocks and the ground had been soaked with blood and sweat spilled, medicines, remains of organs and half-buried amputations that still remained here, as a witness of the great tragedy that was lived in the days of the Battle of the Ebro.

The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) was one battle in the war against Fascism. It started before World War II and was actually a glimpse of what would later happen. This was an internal uprising, but it was of essential importance for the further development of Fascism in Europe, and so many volunteers from other European countries participated. The material was even used in literature, for example, in Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. Later this war was almost forgotten because the Second World War was really worse, and it was much, much bigger. And so history tends to be forgotten, the younger generation sees the film version of For Whom the Bell Tolls with Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman and thinks it's a kind of Western. But there is the Xarxa d'Espais de Memòria del Memorial Democràtic (Network of Memory Spaces of the Democratic Memorial) which is a series of memorials at important places of the Civil War. The cave is now listed, as well as the municipal cemetery of La Bisbal de Falset where numerous victims of the Battle of the Ebro are buried, including 14 International Brigadiers.

A great step in the development of the site as an open air museum was the research by Dr. Angela Jackson from Great Britain. She arrived in 2000 researching for her thesis with the title British Women and the Spanish Civil War, which was published in 2001. It was later printed as a book and was quite popular, and it made the cave hospital known. This first book was soon followed by a second book named Beyond the Battlefield: Testimony, Memory and Remembrance of a Cave Hospital in the Spanish Civil War which was dedicated to the cave hospital and was published in Catalan and English. She moved to Catalonia in 2001 and currently lives in Priorat.

The cave is located at the road T-702 between La Bisbal de Falset and La Palma d'Ebre. From La Bisbal de Falset follow the road north, after 1.4 km turn left on a single lane paved road. The turnoff is not signposted, and there is actually no parking lot, so you should park carefully along the road. If you can see the cave on the left side of the T-702 you missed the turnoff.