Seventeen years? But if they still have to drink a bottle ”. This phrase, attributed to the politician Federica Montseny, gave name to an entire lost generation. Surprised, she said it after contemplating the tender levy of soldiers mobilized by the government of the Second Republic in 1938. Adolescents and young people called up on April 28 of that year, a replacement with which Juan Negrín, president of the executive, wanted trying to stop the offensive in Catalonia by Franco's troops.
The members of the fifth of the bottle, in many cases minors, would end up fighting in the battle of the Ebro, the biggest clash of the entire Civil War. “They stole our youth” is the phrase that many of the 27,000 mobilized, according to estimates, have repeated for years to those who have wanted to listen.
