Documentation
Historical Notes

Why Burgos?

Tags: Spanish Civil War, History, Freedom, Opus Dei, Politics
Burgos, 1938
Burgos, 1938
After getting through the Pyrenees mountains and arriving in Andorra at the end of 1937, Father Josemaria went via France to Pamplona, in the opposite zone of Spain. There, after brief stay, he decided to go to Burgos, where he lived from January 8, 1938 until March 27, 1939, and, like so many people in Spain at that time, suffered a great deal of hardship. He settled on Burgos for three basic reasons. Firstly, because it had the best railway connections to the other provincial towns in that zone of Spain, so it would be easier for the people in Opus Dei who had been sent to the various battlefronts of that zone, known as the “National” zone, to come and see him – though not, of course, those who were in the “Republican” zone. A second reason was that Father Casimiro Morcillo, the priest responsible for the organization in the Madrid-Alcala diocese, and therefore for Father Josemaria, was living in Burgos. And the third reason was that many other people Father Josemaria knew were also living there, and he wished to continue in contact with them and do apostolate with them.

It has been suggested that Father Josemaria wanted somehow to ingratiate himself with the provisional government of that zone, which had established itself in Burgos. This was very far from being the case, for the simple reason that he was unknown outside the church circles of Aragon and Madrid and, from the viewpoint of government circles, totally insignificant. His arrival in Burgos went unremarked in the press and in the political sphere. He had, it is true, met literally thousands of people in Madrid, through his priestly work for the Foundation for the Sick, but apart from some students and lecturers with whom he also did apostolate, the vast majority of the people he met were the terminally ill in the Madrid hospitals, families living in slums, street-children from the poorest districts in the Porta Coeli Asylum.

Opus Dei itself was totally unknown at the time; it consisted mainly of a few dozen students, most of whom were scattered on the different battlefronts of both zones.

During the time Father Josemaria was in Burgos, he was mainly in contact with people in Church circles and the academic world, particularly young students he had known while he was running the DYA Academy (a small tutorial college he had started in Madrid before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War), and who came to see him in Burgos from various parts of the country.

Father Josemaria stayed for most of the time in a small hotel, no longer standing, called the Hotel Sabadell, together with Pedro Casciaro and Francisco Botella, who had been enlisted in the army as privates. Jose Maria Albareda, who was staying relatively near Burgos, in Vitoria, spent some days with them from time to time.