El Pinell de l'Ebre

We are in Penill de Brai, which is in the middle of the area where Franco won the decisive breakthrough in the Spanish Civil War. A number of Danish volunteers who fought against the fascists died here, among other comrades from the international brigades, including the danish poet Gustav Munch-Petersen, who came to my mother's home when she was a little girl.

We are sitting in the hotel's restaurant, which is its own little pocket of rural boredom from the 50s, 60s or 70s, it can be hard to decide.

The trip up here was via a sensational cycle path, built where there used to be a mountain railway, over bridges and long, perhaps 500 meter long, black tunnels, with nice little train stations on the route. But there will be a video of that trip later.

Right now it's just quiet Bossa, and a thought for a great Danish poet, who left his children and wife at home, and met his fate in the retreat after the battle of the Ebro, in the neighboring town of Gandesa. The walls of the houses in Penill have graffiti that shows that although the majority of Spaniards do not want to talk about the civil war, it is still here, here at the center of the 'Batalla de la l'Ebre'

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