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The Pocket of Bielsa

Bielsa, Sobrarbe, Huesca

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The Pocket of Bielsa

Historical milestone · Bielsa, Sobrarbe, Huesca

Image of Bielsa, not of the place itself.

The battle of the Bolsa de Bielsa (Bielsa Pocket) was fought between April and June 1938 in Alto Aragón. After the collapse of the Huesca front under the rebel offensive of March, the 43rd Republican Division, under the command of militia major Antonio Beltrán Casaña, El Esquinazau, was left encircled at the headwaters of the Cinca and Cinqueta rivers facing the 3rd Navarre Division. With barely seven thousand men and four guns against fourteen thousand enemy soldiers and thirty guns, it resisted for two months in isolation thanks to the terrain and Republican tenacity, after halting the Francoist advance on the 6th of April in an ambush at Fanlo. On the 15th of June 1938 incendiary bombings left Bielsa in ashes, and in the early hours of the 16th the last combatants crossed into France.

abril-junio de 1938

Photo: Juan R. Lascorz (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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