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JOSEP ALMUDEVER MATEU, the last surviving International Brigader who fought General Francisco Franco’s forces in Spain, died today at the age of 101.
He was born to Spanish parents in Marseille but returned to Spain, where he taught adult classes and read newspapers to the illiterate in his local village in Alcazar.
Soon after the fascist coup in 1936 he enlisted to join the fight to defend the Republic. Initially deemed too young, he eventually saw combat on the Aragon front, where he was wounded.
Once recovered, he used his French passport to join the International Brigades and stayed with them until they were demobilised as the war slipped away from the Republicans.
He escaped to Marseille but returned to the front before fleeing with his father to Alicante. On April 1 1939 he was imprisoned in the Albatera camp with 17,000 Republican prisoners and condemned to death for the crime of “aid to the rebellion.”
This was later reduced to12 years’ imprisonment and Mr Almudever was released on grounds of good conduct in November 1942.
Nevertheless, he continued the fight against the Franco dictatorship, joining a clandestine guerilla group, narrowly escaping capture in a bungled operation in 1946.
He fled across the Pyrenees to France and remained there until his death.
