TIMES OF PEACE, TIMES OF WAR: THE RED CROSS AND THE COUNTRY HOLIDAYS IN SPAIN (1920 -1937)

Abstract

The Red Cross appeared, in the beginning, as a means for assisting wounded soldiers in times of war. Nevertheless, it soon showed its readiness to act also in times of peace extending its activities among the civil population, and spreading the reach of its initiatives from the sanitary towards those of a social and humanitarian character, including activities related to protection of childhood. In this sense, different national Red Cross societies took part in the creation, realization and keeping up of country holidays in several European and American countries. In Spain, in times of peace, before the Civil War (1936-1939), local and provincial committees, as well as the Central Committee of the Red Cross created country holidays. These country holidays presented a certain complexity related, mainly, to the type of the institutional organism that promoted them, the role played by the same, the goals assigned to them, and those characteristics referred, among others, to the peculiarities of their members (their relation, or not, to the Red Cross, sex, geographical origin, etc.), the teaching and sanitary staff, the places chosen, etc. The outbreak of the Civil War constituted, for the International Committee of the Red Cross, a situation to which the international agreements of the time could not be applied. A situation that had to be met during those events. In times of war the Red Cross assumed the functions referred to the country holidays which were completely different to those it had to carry out in times of peace.