The Spanish town destroyed in 1937 is still revealing what war left behind

On the edge of Zaragoza province, the remains of Belchite sit among dry grass and scrub, their broken walls exposed to the weather. Towers rise without roofs, doorways lead nowhere and sections of masonry have been left much as they were after the fighting. A newer settlement stands nearby, separated from the ruins by a road and by decades of ordinary life. Yet the old town has never quite become an ordinary archaeological site. Its damaged streets, trenches and scattered objects belong to one of the most violent periods in modern Spanish history. Beneath the soil, archaeologists continue to find small traces of the people who fought, worked and died here during the Spanish Civil War.Someone carried medicine. Someone lost a button. Someone kept a bottle close at hand. These fragments do not explain the entire conflict, but they show how it was experienced at ground level.The old Belchite was left behind as a new town emergedBelchite was badly damaged during fighting in 1938, when Republican and Nationalist forces battled for control of the area. The town became one of the many places caught up in the wider conflict between supporters of Spain's Republican government and the forces ...