Belchite — the old town

OVERVIEW

Belchite is a town in the province of Zaragoza, about forty kilometres south-east of the city, on a plain ringed by low hills. In 1122 Alfonso the Battler founded the Confraternity of Belchite to hold the frontier between the Christian kingdoms and al-Andalus; in 1809 French and Spanish forces fought the Battle of María nearby during the Peninsular War.

HISTORY

Between 24 August and 7 September 1937, Republican forces fought Franco's rebels in and around the town in the Battle of Belchite. The fighting was street by street and the town was destroyed. After 1939 a new Belchite was built beside it and the old town was deliberately left standing in ruins. Several thousand people died in the battle and its aftermath, and the town's Republican dead were used as forced labour on the new town.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

The ruins have the reputation that a place like this acquires — voices in the shell of the San Martín church, figures in the arcades, sounds at night — and the site has been filmed for Spanish paranormal television. The entry keeps the ruin as what it is first: a battlefield inside a town, deliberately preserved, where a very large number of people died in two weeks and the buildings still show it.

VISITING

The old town is unsafe and fenced; access is by guided tour only, booked through the town hall, with night tours in season. Do not enter outside the tours — the structures are collapsing.