My mother, Helvecia Hidalgo, who has died aged 91, was one of 3,800 children evacuated to the UK from northern Spain after the bombing of Guernica by fascists during the Spanish civil war in April 1937.
At the age of 14 she boarded the liner Habana with her 10-year-old brother Elvio and eight-year-old sister Delia. After the ship docked in Southampton the children were initially looked after by the Salvation Army at a camp in Eastleigh, where they slept 10 to a tent. The British government would not help the evacuees on the basis that such a move might compromise its policy of non-intervention in the war. But fundraising committees were set up and the public offered generous practical and financial support to the children.
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