The UMU professor Pedro María Egea discovers that the famous French photographer and filmmaker told in the documentary ‘Victoria de la vida’, in 1937, how the prosthetics workshop of the international brigade hospital installed in the Cloister of La Merced worked
The Region of Murcia had, during the Spanish civil war (1936-1939), four hospitals of the International Brigades in the capital and one in Fortuna. In Murcia there were the Federica Montseny hospital (current La Merced cloister), the Pasionaria hospital (current IES Licenciado Cascales), the Vaillant-Couturier hospital [escritor comunista muerto en 1937] (in the Maristas school on the Malecón) and the Red House (building of the Chys gallery, in Trapería street), which bore the name of Commander Dubois, head of Health of the XIV Brigade, who died on the battlefront in August of 1937. For the first time, the University of Murcia has documented moving images of two of these hospitals. The UMU Professor of Contemporary History Pedro María Egea Bruno has identified them in the film ‘Victoire de la vie (Victory of life)’ (1937), by the famous photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson (who would later create the Magnum agency with Robert Capa), a documentary about the hospitals of republican Spain.
In conversation with LA VERDAD, Egea Bruno highlights that this documentary includes “perhaps the most interesting part of the Federica Montseny hospital, which is the creation of a prosthesis workshop.” In Spain there was no experience of prosthetics, recalls the professor, “because it did not participate in the First World War and did not have the same tradition as other countries, and it was unfortunate for the brigade doctors to meet these young amputees and without any defense or defense. protection. To the chief of operating rooms, Max Langer, an Austrian, he devised the possibility of creating a prosthetics workshop, he brought specialized material, adequate labor from other countries … and precisely those images from the Cartier-Bresson documentary reflect that vision of the hospital in the brigades in Murcia, how prostheses are fitted to these people, how amputees walk … perhaps for me the most important part of the documentary is to collect the operation of that prosthesis workshop in Murcia ».
“These images capture that vision of the brigade hospital in Murcia, how prostheses are fitted to these people, how amputees walk … perhaps for me the most important part of the documentary”
The documentary, which can be seen on the YouTube platform, takes 46 minutes, and the images referring to Murcia appear from minute 31, where you can see what the Cloister of La Merced looked like when it then functioned as a blood hospital. Pedro María Egea Bruno says that the Federica Montseny hospital had 360 beds, three operating rooms and a complete radiological service, and was highlighted by the press as “a modern hospital, with a large staff and zealous for their respective tasks.” In that workshop they manufactured prostheses for legs, arms, hands and pseudoarthrosis devices. “In prosthetic arms the fingers were mobile, and the affected person could split the meat during the meal, write and light a cigarette”, as can be seen in these scenes.
“It was a very important contribution to the moment,” says Egea Bruno, who still feels “shocked” to recognize Murcia in this documentary film. In 2015 the professor already organized an exhibition on the international brigades and then found photographs referring to the blood hospitals, the doctors and the wounded in Murcia. They have not yet been able to investigate from the University the details of that filming or the visit to Murcia by one of the fathers of photojournalism, but, surely, the material they have at their disposal arouses interest and may even lead to a doctoral thesis. “This requires an in-depth investigation, at the moment we are shocked by the images we have found,” acknowledges THE TRUTH. “We are for the moment landing with what we have. There is a very important detail, which are the typical tiles of the Law cloister, and the floor, very interesting ».
“There is more than enough material to investigate and to do a doctoral thesis referred only to the hospitals of the international brigades in Murcia”
Pedro Maria aegea bruno
Professor of Contemporary History at the UMU
«There are about 12 minutes of the documentary in total referring to Murcia, and there is also an image of the Pasionaria hospital, which would be the IES Cascales, of which the façade can be seen, but the documentary makes mention or a review of the hospitals of the international brigades in Spain, although the documentary is fixed in more detail in La Merced, ”explains the professor. The hospital was later opened to Spanish soldiers, but originally, according to the teacher, it was to attend to the foreign brigade members who fought in the civil war. «They arose all over Spain, and Murcia was perhaps chosen as the headquarters of hospitals because there were hardly any bombings during the civil war. The case of Cartagena is different, because it registers 120 bombings, but in Murcia there were two, and this reality may have led Murcia to be chosen for these hospitals. For its tranquility, for being a city in the rear, which was not attacked by Franco’s aviation. Perhaps that was the reason why Murcia had such an important development in brigade health ».
“Many possibilities”
Pedro María Egea Bruno became a professor at the University of Murcia in 1995, and since 2011 he has been a professor of Contemporary History. «I began to investigate with the centenary of the University of Murcia, when we held the exhibition and the conference on the university hospital, and we see that there is a world with many possibilities, because there is information. The Soviet archive has a wealth of information on the international brigades, and it is a world to explore. There is more than enough material to investigate and to do a doctoral thesis referring only to Murcia ”, considers the professor.
Cartier Bresson (1908-2004), famous French photographer, “the father of reportage”, would eventually have an unstoppable professional development and was the first Western journalist, recalls the UMU, authorized to enter the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin to take pictures, record Mao Zedong’s entry into Beijing or Gandhi’s death.
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