25th August

At dawn on this day in 1944, Paris went crazy.
The Nazi occupation was over.
The first tanks and armoured cars had entered the city a few hours before. "Is it the Americans?" people asked.
The names scrawled in white paint on those tanks and armoured cars were: 'Guadalajara', 'Ebro', 'Teruel', 'Brunete', 'Madrid', 'Don Quijote', 'Durruti' ...
The first liberators of Paris were the Spanish republicans.
Defeated in their own land they fought for France.
They were convinced that Spain's rescue would follow.
They were wrong.

(Eduardo Galeano, "Children of the Days: a calendar of human history")