The Warsaw Hospital in Toulouse, a milestone of social medicine, the work of Spanish exiles

Last week we left the XIV Spanish Guerrilla Corps, which had invaded the Aran Valley in Lleida, retreating to its trans-Pyrenean base in Pau. Once the Operation Reconquista of Spain began on October 3, 1944, the overwhelming numerical superiority of the enemy, ten Franco troops for each guerrilla, forced the commanders – the politician, Santiago Carrillo, and the military, General Luis Fernández, head of the Group of Spanish Guerrillas (AGE) of the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) – to order on October 21 the withdrawal of all republican forces to avoid being surrounded and destroyed. Some units had already done so on their own initiative and an undetermined number of guerrillas managed to break the sieges and join the maquis groups, “those from the mountains”, who operated in the interior of Spain.

The retreating troops left 129 dead and 218 prisoners on the battle fronts and took with them between 241 and 588 wounded, according to sources, who would receive medical care in France. Anticipating this, the leadership of the Communist Party of Spain had installed, with the help of its French namesake, a first aid hospital in Toulouse, headquarters of the PCE, at number 15 Varsovia Street – a name that was, in reality, a distortion of the occitan expression see vinbottle holder or wine pourer–, an old chateau to the outskirts that the provisional government allowed him to occupy thanks to the PCF ministers: 53 beds served by a staff of 25 doctors and nurses, mostly communists, initially led by José Miguel Momeñe, apparently a practitioner who graduated from the university. of Valladolid, according to Francisco Guerra (Medicine in Republican Exile, 2003), that his medical experience in the wars in Spain and against the Nazis had earned him the rank of medical lieutenant in the FFI.