Overview

This sculpt represents the type, not a portrait of one named individual: a mother caring for her small child among the nearly half a million people who fled Spain for France in the last weeks of the Civil War, in the exodus now known as La Retirada ("the withdrawal"). She is shown mid-pause on the road or at a waypoint, seated on a suitcase and feeding the child from a small bowl, with a bundled sack of belongings beside her — one of the ordinary, unheroic moments that made up a genuinely mass civilian displacement.

The reference photographs used to design this figure appear to be two views from the same original photo session (same mother and child, different crops), found during research rather than supplied with any attribution or source information. Because we don't know the photographer or rights holder, they are used purely as an internal design reference and are not reproduced anywhere on this page. See Historical References below.

Historical Context

By late 1938, the Spanish Civil War had turned decisively against the Republic — the side loyal to the elected government, as distinct from Franco's Nationalist faction. The Nationalist victory at the Battle of the Ebro (July–November 1938) broke the Republican army's ability to resist, and on 23 December 1938 Franco launched an offensive to take Catalonia and its capital, Barcelona. Barcelona fell on 26 January 1939. What followed was La Retirada: between 28 January and 15 February 1939, close to half a million Republican soldiers and civilians crossed the Pyrenees into France on foot, in trucks, and in carts, most carrying nothing more than what they could bundle up and take with them. France opened its border to women, children, and the elderly first, on 28 January; unarmed men followed from 5 February, then Republican military units. Refugee columns were bombed and strafed along the way by aircraft of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, allied to the Nationalists, and much of the route lay under snow in freezing winter temperatures.

French government figures at the time counted roughly 440,000 crossings: about 170,000 women, children, and elderly people; 40,000 civilian men; 10,000 wounded; and 220,000 soldiers. This figure belongs to that first, largest group — the demographic France's border policy was actually designed to let through first.

Sourced from the Wikipedia article on La Retirada, citing Antony Beevor's The Spanish Civil War and Scott Soo's The Routes to Exile (see Recommended Reading). Cross-check specific casualty and headcount figures against those sources before quoting them in print — as with most mass-displacement statistics, exact numbers vary between historians.

Camps on the Sand

France was not prepared for an exodus of this size. Planning had assumed roughly 2,000 refugees a day; 140,000 crossed in the first four days alone. On arrival, French authorities separated men of military age from women, children, and the elderly, and confiscated most of what refugees still carried. Families were frequently split up in the process. Non-combatants were dispersed to shelters across France, while men of military age — along with some women and children — were interned in camps hastily built near the border, the largest of them on open beaches: Argelès-sur-Mer, Saint-Cyprien, and Le Barcarès. Argelès, the biggest, held over 100,000 people at its peak; the first arrivals found only barbed wire and open sand, with no shelter from wind, rain, or cold, and had to dig their own holes and build their own shacks — using the refugees themselves as the labour force. Water was scarce, food inadequate, and dysentery widespread.

Conditions were bad enough that historians and contemporary sources alike describe these as "concentration camps" in the period sense of the term — mass detention camps for a civilian and military population France considered undesirable, not extermination camps in the sense the term later acquired through the Holocaust. That distinction matters and shouldn't be blurred in either direction: it was a real and severe humanitarian crisis, but a different kind of institution from what the same English phrase can evoke today.

Return and resettlement followed over the rest of 1939: about 300,000 refugees had gone back to Spain, voluntarily or under pressure, by year's end; 160,000–180,000 remained in France, many placed in labour battalions, working in agriculture, or enlisting in the French Foreign Legion; roughly 30,000 emigrated onward to other countries, Mexico chief among them.

Sourced from the Wikipedia articles on La Retirada and the Argelers concentration camp, citing Scott Soo's The Routes to Exile (2016).

Clothing & Equipment

Neck scarf: a plain scarf or shawl worn draped around the neck and shoulders rather than over the head — her hair is left uncovered, grey and simply combed. Everyday, practical dress for an older working-class Spanish woman of the period, not a uniform item of any kind. A head-covering kerchief would be an equally plausible alternative if you'd rather vary it.

Cardigan / jumper: a brown/tan long-sleeved knitted top, worn buttoned against the winter cold of the January–February crossing. This is our own colour choice for this render, not a documented standard — ordinary civilian knitwear of the period had no fixed colour at all, so any plausible everyday tone (grey, navy, green, burgundy) is an equally legitimate choice.

Skirt: a long, plain cream/ivory skirt in this render, typical everyday workwear fabric of the period rather than anything specific to the refugee crossing itself. Like the cardigan, the colour is our interpretation rather than a fixed standard — civilian skirts of the 1930s came in whatever colour and pattern the wearer owned, so feel free to vary it.

Apron: a lighter, undyed or pale canvas apron worn over the skirt — again ordinary domestic dress, not refugee-specific gear; most of the fleeing civilians simply left home in whatever they were already wearing.

Footwear: flat, worn shoes rather than boots — consistent with civilians walking long distances in unsuitable everyday footwear, a detail widely noted in period accounts of the crossing.

Child's coat: a mismatched, patterned coat, plausibly stitched from whatever fabric scraps were available — wartime textile shortages made patchwork children's clothing common, and it isn't meant to represent one specific documented garment.

Bundle / sack: a plain sackcloth bundle representing the few possessions a refugee family could carry — most people made this crossing with only what they could physically carry on foot.

Bowl and cup: a plain tin bowl sits on the ground near her feet, and the child holds a matching cup — simple, everyday mess-kit items rather than anything military-issue, consistent with a family cooking and eating wherever they could on the road.

Suitcase (seat): she's posed sitting on a hard-shell travel case rather than standing — a small, believable staging choice (people did rest wherever they could on a slow, exhausting crossing) that also gives the piece a second material and colour to play against the fabrics above. A cheap, well-worn case of this kind was typically vulcanised fibre or pressed cardboard — a stiff, almost plastic-feeling board material, not real leather — often with leather corner trim and straps; period colours ran mostly dark brown or black, with tan and blue also documented. Any of those is a legitimate choice; pick whichever reads best against the rest of the palette.

None of this clothing is uniform or faction-specific — it's ordinary Spanish working-class dress of the late 1930s, which is exactly the point: these were civilians, not combatants, caught in the war's final and largest displacement.

Colours Overview

Colour names are generic mixing targets, not brand-specific codes. Swap in your preferred paint range (Vallejo, AK Interactive, Scale75, etc.).

Glossary

La Retirada: Spanish/Catalan for "the withdrawal" — the exodus of nearly 500,000 Republican soldiers and civilians from Catalonia into France between 28 January and 15 February 1939.

Republican faction: the side of the Spanish Civil War loyal to the elected government of the Second Spanish Republic, defeated by the Nationalists in 1939.

Nationalist faction: the side of the Spanish Civil War led by the military officers who rose up against the Republic in July 1936, eventually under Francisco Franco, whose victory in Catalonia in early 1939 triggered this exodus.

Concentration camp (1939 usage): in this context, a mass internment camp for refugees and former combatants that France considered undesirable — a real and severe humanitarian institution, but a different kind of place from the Nazi extermination camps the same English phrase is more commonly associated with today. See Camps on the Sand above.

This glossary is shared across the Linden Models Spanish Civil War series. Terms already defined on other guide pages are not repeated here — see the Republican Miliciana, Young Falangist, British Volunteer, and German Motorcyclist guides for those.

Historical References

This figure is a composite type rather than a portrait, drawn from a pair of period photographs that appear to show the same mother and child from the same original session. We have not established the photographer or rights holder for these images, so out of caution neither is reproduced or linked here.

General background sourced from the Wikipedia articles on La Retirada and the Argelers concentration camp. Our own studio photography of the sculpted and painted figure is the primary visual reference on this page.

Recommended Reading

• The Routes to Exile: France and the Spanish Civil War Refugees, 1939–2009 — Scott Soo
• La Retirada — Laurence Garcia & Georges Bartoli (illustrated, drawing on eyewitness Josep Bartoli's own images)
• Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 — Adam Hochschild
• The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936–1939 — Antony Beevor
• The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution, and Revenge — Paul Preston

Links carry the lindenmodels-20 Amazon Associates tag. The first two are specifically about La Retirada and the refugee experience; Hochschild, Beevor, and Preston are general histories for wider context.

Downloads

A print-ready PDF of this guide — handy to keep next to your paints while you work.

Other Figures in This Series