Málaga 1937

The mass evacuation of the civilian population of Málaga started on Sunday 7 (February 1937). Twenty-five thousand German, Italian and Moorish troops entered the city on Monday morning 8th, tanks, submarines, warships, aircraft, all at once to overwhelm the defenses of the city held by a small group of heroic Spanish troops without tanks or planes.

( … ) Imagine a hundred and fifty thousand men, women and children preparing to leave in search of safety to a town a hundred miles. There is only one road they can take. There is no other way out. This road, which borders on the one side, with the high mountains of Sierra Nevada, and on the other, the road built on the side of cliffs linens and up and down more than 500 feet above sea level. The city to attain is Almería and it is more than two hundred miles away. ( … ) The trip of these women, elderly and children should take them five days and nights, at least. You will not find food in the villages, either trains or buses to transport them. They have to walk and walk as they stagger and stumble with feet full of cracks and wounds. Fascists are bombarded from the air and shoot them from warships.

Norman Bethune : The Crime of the Road Málaga – Almería . 1937

… three quarters of an hour, part of our aviation communicated me that masses fled at full speed towards Motril. 
 To accompany them in their flight and make them run more quickly we dispatched our aviation to bomb some trucks on fire.

Gonzalo Queipo: Talk radio, Sevilla, February 9, 1937.