Request of the Spanish Government for the technical assistance of the League in the study of measures for providing food supplies for refugees (report)
1938-11-03 032-0199-005 - 4 - precarious. It is no unusual thing for inhabitants of Barcelona to wait for hours in the market hall for an issue of, say, 100 grams of fish, only to be turned away empty-handed for lack of supplies. Much of the population is increasingly on the trek scouring the co...
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| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
| Language: | English |
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03 November 1938
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/9B4816CA-9205-4D5E-85DB-9DD33B5E17B4 http://hdl.handle.net/10796/02430843-DD33-404F-8292-7D4082584025 |
| Summary: | 1938-11-03
032-0199-005
- 4 - precarious. It is no unusual thing for inhabitants of Barcelona to wait for hours in the market hall for an issue of, say, 100 grams of fish, only to be turned away empty-handed for lack of supplies. Much of the population is increasingly on the trek scouring the country for what it can barter or pick up. 5. Those of the evacuated population who can work, or have independent means, are classed in the ordinary civil population. The refugee category is confined to the homeless destitute - women and children and old men past work - living perforce on the charity of the Government. Some are grouped in colonies and fed in communal kitchens; others are billeted in villages. Unlike the civil population, each refugee receives his rations free of charge. And as he is unable to supplement them by purchase and much less able than the native population to supplement them by scouring the country, his rations are fixed at a higher rate (roughly 250 grams in weight and reckoned at 2 pesetas a day) and are more regularly issued. But, owing to shortage of stocks or transport difficulties, supplies are often so scarce that Government is obliged to make up the deficiency of the ration by a corresponding issue of cash up to the 2 pesetas limit, leaving the refugee to fend for himself therewith as best he can. 6. Though the refugees are a heavy drain on the Republican Government's resources, it is Government's definite policy that Spain should ''consume its own smoke", retaining all refugees within her own borders and bringing back those who have sought refuge abroad. What we have seen and ascertained has satisfied us that Government has done its utmost to give the refugee a fair deal and, for the reasons we have given, in many ways a preferential one. But, in the ultimate stages of the struggle for existence, the Army must of course come first, then the workers and their dependents, and the refugees with the destitute section of the civil population last. For, unlike the Army and the workers, the refugees are not an asset but a liability thrust upon Republican Spain from outside, an extra burden on a population already struggling for existence. 7. Each refugee has an identity card certifying him as such and its elaborate details (name, sex, age group, previous and present address, etc.) are tabulated in a central bureau. These statistics are accurate as far as they go, but there is necessarily a considerable time-lag and the returns only purport to be complete to the end of July, when they totalled just under 2,000,000. Government is under no temptation to exaggerate these statistics, for each refugee registered means the issue of a free ration. On the other hand, the evacuated strives to the end of his means to avoid the charity stigma of refugee registration. The Government's statistics, therefore, are a minimum, liable to daily increase with the receipt of returns of refugees still unregistered with the continuous transfer of people from the evacuated to the refugee category, and with fresh waves of refugees. The Government puts the winter peak at about 3,000,000 which seems a not improbable approximation.
292/946/32/199(iv) |
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| Physical Description: | TEXT |