Sleeping in a Vaubam Fortification: Fuerte de la Concepción (Salamanca)

Patio de Armas with the chapel remnants

This is a quite belated blog entry which I was initially planning to publish in late October 2017. I spent several days touring the Portugal/Spain border fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, as well as the battlefield of Fuentes de Oñoro.

But how would you feel if in addition to visiting all these historic places,  you had the opportunity to sleep in truly original Vauban fortification now refurbished as an upper scale (4 stars) hotel?

This is actually the case of the Fuerte Concepción located at Aldea del Obispo, now called Domus Real Hotel. I don't think it is  well known specially among British tourists, a shame because it is the perfect base-camp for touring all the places mentioned plus the battlefields of El Bodón and Tamames in the Spanish side and the River Coa area in the Portuguese side.

A little bit of background and context: until very recently, the only good communication routes between Spain and Portugal passed through Salamanca and Badajoz. To exert control on those two routes, twin fortifications were erected, Ciudad Rodrigo-Almeida and Badajoz-Elvas on both sides of the border respectively.   

Aerial view from a tourist leaflet

Episode 2 - Dragones in Waterloo

This is the second instalment of our trip to Crisis 2015, covering the visit to the Battlefield of Waterloo. I must add that personally, the most emotive milestone of the whole trip, suffering one of those “Stendhal Moments” on arriving to the “Butte de Lion” feet, when I could hardly contain my tears... how many of us in the wargame hobby had played countless hours (with my younger brother in my case) in the early 70s with the Airfix farm and the boxes of British, French and Prussian soldiers???

A visit to the real Waterloo one day in the future was one of my earliest dreams, but it has taken 53 years to become true... I’m sure you understand the feeling

Freezing but happy and moved

A Battlefield Walk at Ciudad Universitaria

Graffitti in the Ciudad Universitaria - The fight continues 80 years later?

I attended on Sunday last week a guided battlefield walk organised by GEFREMA (a non-profit organisation fighting hard to keep the last remaining sites of the Spanish Civil War in Madrid) focused on the Ciudad Universitaria. It would not have been more timely after finishing our recent Chain of Command campaign Bloody November and the incoming publication of a related article in the TooFatLardies Christmas Special in December.

The visit was intrinsically interesting, but also provided a good feel of the battle terrain and a great understanding of the very deep changes operated in the landscape since the mid 30s. As a matter of fact, the site today has almost no resemblance with the topography of the war period as I will explain later.

I will support the narrative and photos included in this post with the attached map, scanned from the book written by Col Martínez Bande in the early 70s (La Marcha sobre Madrid) part of the official military history of the Spanish Civil War published before General Franco passed away in 1975.

(Click to enlarge)

To put you in the historical picture, the Nationalist troops arrived to Madrid in the first week of November. The attacking plan was to enter Madrid through La Casa de Campo park, cross the river Manzanares and penetrate trough the Ciudad Universitaria.

Visiting El Alto del León: The Republican Fortifications

This a long due post from a second visit in August to El Alto del León, this time to see the Republican lines  (see here the post commenting the first visit to the Nationalists line in the same area). In the opening photo of this post you can see the communist symbol (hammer and sickle) followed by the incription "1937" that we found carved in stone next to a major resting area of the Republican line located at Peña del Cuervo.

The map above shows the the battle-front lines, the Nationalists in blue and the Republicans in red; the black ellipse covers the focus of our visit. The map and many more interesting materials can be found in Domingo Pliego's blog, a veteran mountain trekker who has explored in detailed all the Guadarrama area.

Visiting El Alto del León Fortifications of the SCW (2)

(Continued from previous post)

We finished the visit to the La Sevillana position looking into some of the buildings that were used as accommodation to the Nationalists troops. The first two photos are from a building erected just behind the observation post bunker. The construction seems to have been of very good quality with a wide access door and a row of windows.

Given its size we calculated that it could shelter a probably a full section (around 20 men) or even more. 

Another smaller shelter stands nearby, an officer's or NCOs lodging place?

Visiting El Alto del León Fortifications of the SCW (1)

Saturday July 19^th marked the official launch of our new project to play a campaign in the Spanish Civil War with Chain of Command. And no better way to start the project than visiting one of the battlefields next to Madrid (El Alto del León) during the morning, followed by a nice lunch and a game in the afternoon with the first painted minis… and almost coinciding with the 78^th anniversary of the start of war (18^th July, 1936)!

Background

Around 60 km north of Madrid, El Alto del León (1,500 mts height) is a key mountain pass of the road linking Spain’s capital with some of the main cities of the former Old Castilla region in the north (Avila, Segovia, Salamanca or Valladolid) and leading into the north-western region of Galicia.

 

El Alto del León now and then

Today it is a secondary road, as between the early 60s and 70s two toll tunnels and a motorway were dig underneath, facilitating the road communications between the two halves of Spain. However in 1936, el Alto del León was one of the three key mountain passes to reach Madrid from the North (the other two being Navacerrada and Somosierra, the latter also a site of a famous battle in the Napoleonic wars).