Caldes en Temps de Guerres

Station – Totem Pole

Caldes train station, opened in 1862, quickly became one of the focal points in the town’s history. It was the communication interchange that first facilitated the arrival of summer holidaymakers and second turned Caldes into a strategic town to assist during periods of war.

Over the months of January and February 1944, a total of 1,073 soldiers from the Italian Navy arrived in several contingents at Caldes train station. In February, more sailors arrived, some from the Isla del Rey Hospital (Menorca), where they had been treated for burns and wounds sustained during a Luftwaffe attack. Twenty-one of them tried to flee on the night of 22nd April on a goods train, but were arrested and deported to the Miranda de Ebro concentration camp (Burgos). On 4th July, all the refugees returned to Italy on a 30-carriage train with a mass farewell from locals. In the month of November, a passenger train brought the first contingent of Nazi spies to Caldes, who would continue to arrive throughout 1944 and 1945, and would be accommodated at the town’s different thermal spas, houses and chalets.