El amigo Toni Cantó nos envia desde Valencia este reportaje. Las fotografías fueron realizadas por el Diario Levante

I send you several pics of the great success of the homage to the International Brigades Veterans in Spain. These pics were taken at Valencia North Train Station on their arrival by... a media of the capital! (Levante-EMV) That's because you cannot see ALL the people that was there. Date is Friday 11/08/1996, about 13:30 hours.

Imagine all this under shouts of "¡¡No pasaran!!", "¡Vivan las Brigadas Internacionales!" and "¡Viva la Republica!", singings of "The International" and "¡Ay, Carmela!", fists in the air, continuous applauses, lines of honour... and you can imagine how I feel. In several cases, spontaneous applauses and shouts... lasted continuously for more than 20 minutes, even 30! (Absolutely true)

Pic of the arrival. Please notice the faces of the people and how there're thousands of persons filling the station. The placard says "Welcome, friends of the Freedom". The flags are NOT the current Spanish Monarchy red-yellow-red official flag created by dictator Franco, but the red-yellow-purple of the Spanish Republic.

Walking among people under Republican flags... with the red carnations they were given in the hand.

The International Brigades veterans meet Spanish veterans of the Civil War.

One of the tenths of groups of people under 18 that took part in the reception and the acts. Please notice that about 50% of the people is under-30 and a lot of them under-18. McDonald's is also a success here, but it seems that the Spaniard spirit is not dead... ;-)

I.B. vets being received at the Valencian Government.

A person cries in emotion. I did also... a lot of people did. No shame at all. >:-)

A group of about 20 Fascists tried to sabotage the reception... obviously they couldn't. 20 against 5,000... wow! Impossible. Almost nobody noticed they were there. Please notice that the attitude of police was as civilized as you see in the pic. Fascists were seen only in the reception; they didn't appear in any other act (and all of the acts had a success similar to what you're seeing).

Everybody wants to shake their hands, honour them...well, don't allow anybody to say that we Spaniards -even the youngest- don't remember and are not grateful... ;-)