Within the hour they set off for the assembly point, the park that surrounded the home of the Catalan parliament, becoming part of a stream that turned into a river of men, women, cars and trucks, not all armed, but all heading in the same direction, singing revolutionary songs with the light of battle in their eyes and bearing. Cynical as he was, it was hard for Cal Jardine not to be impressed.

Juan Luis Laporta greeted them, but not with much in the way of grace, which Cal put down to lack of sleep and being harassed by the need to get away his flying column of five hundred men, who would be the first to depart, with instruction to see how far forward lay the enemy. Allocated three trucks of their own and a motorcyclist to act as messenger, what Cal had taken to calling the Olympians were not at the head of the column, but they were close, not that it was moving at any great speed; that was dictated by a van laden with armour plating, naturally slow.

Excited, cheerful, making jokes, they shouted happily and incomprehensibly at any human or animal presence they encountered, travelling, once they were past the outskirts of the city, on an uneven road that ran up from the coastal plain through the high hills and beyond into open country dotted with dwellings but few large settlements. Pretty soon the clouds of dust thrown up by those ahead calmed the enthusiasm; a shut and covered mouth became the norm.

Yet they could not help but be like the kids they were, eager to drink in the details of a strange landscape, earth that alternated from being baked dry, with red rock-filled fields, then, in more hilly country, changing to deep-green and abundant grasslands, with thick, small, but well-watered forest and grand if rather faded manor houses.

A few miles further on, the trees were sparse and isolated, under which goats used the shade to stay cool, grubbing at earth that would provide little sustenance, while water came from deep-sunk wells and was obviously a precious commodity.

Cal and Vince were looking at the country with equal concentration but with a different level of interest. Wells could mean a water shortage and that would have a bearing on what was militarily possible, especially as they were easy to corrupt. They were high above sea level, but it was no plateau; too many high hills made sure that movement would be observed and at a good distance, allowing any enemy to set up their defences in plenty of time.

Fertile or near-barren, the crop fields, pasture and olive groves were small and enclosed by drystone walls, another fact immediately noted by a pair looking out for the conditions under which they might have to fight, such structures presenting excellent cover when attacking, while being perfect for defence in what Cal Jardine suspected would be small-unit engagements.

With a keen sense of history, he could not help but also imagine the other warriors who had passed this way over the centuries, fighting in these very hills and valleys: Iberian aborigines facing migrating Celtic tribesmen, they in turn battling the Carthaginians, who in time fell to the highly disciplined Roman legionaries. After several centuries those same Romans lost the provinces to the flaxen-haired Visigoth invaders, the whole mix progenitors of the present population.

There would be Moorish blood too, for the warriors of Islam would have come this way as they conquered in the name of Allah, an incursion from Africa that took them all the way, before they were checked, to the middle of modern France. They were passing through the same landscape as eleventh-century knights like El Cid, advancing to throw the Moors back under a papal banner in that great crusade called the Reconquista, an event that still seemed to define Spain as much as their American empire and the horrors of the Inquisition.

In the beginning they were in territory that was friendly and untouched by conflict, cheered and showered with flowers by the peasants in the hamlets they passed through as much for being Catalan as being Republican supporters of the government, which made the shock of their first encounter with the presence of an enemy all the greater, signalled at a distance by a column of smoke, slowly rising into a clear blue sky, the whole image distorted by waves of hot air.

The small town, not much more really than an extended village, sat in a fertile plain. Beyond that the road they had travelled split in two, one wide and the main road to Saragossa, the other nearer to a track. All around, though distant, lay higher ground, the source of the water that fed their trees and crops, though in late July it was beginning to show signs of baking from the relentless summer heat, while not far off a high and deep pine-forested mound overlooked the place, a huddle of buildings bisected by the road, with a small square dominated in normal times by the church; not now.

First they had seen the burning buildings; what took the eye now was the row of bodies, some shot, some strung up to trees, the latter having been tortured as well, the naked flesh already black from being exposed to the unrelenting sun. There were, too, in a couple of the untorched houses, young women, lying in positions and a state of undress which left no doubt about what they had suffered before they had been killed, while over it all there was the smell of smoke, burnt and rotting flesh; many of the youths they led could not avoid the need to vomit, which led to them being laughed at by their less squeamish Spanish companions.

Not everyone was dead or mutilated; as in most scenes like this there were those who had survived, either by hiding or not being a target of the killers, soon identified as members of the Falange, well-heeled youths who had been aided by the local Civil Guard in ridding the nation of people they saw as their class enemies. Those who came upon this did not at the time know this to be a scene being replicated all over the Peninsula, and it was not confined to one side or the other, especially given the desire for revenge for years of oppression or bloody peasant and worker uprisings.

Although he had watched these boys train for their various events, Cal hardly knew them, even Vince’s boxers, something which he would have to redress if he was to lead them properly. There was a downside to that, of course: faces became names and names became personalities, and when they were wounded or killed, which was unavoidable once the bullets stared flying, it made it that much harder to be indifferent. Now both he and Vince were busy, reassuring those throwing up, telling them to ignore the Spanish taunts, insisting, not without a degree of despondency, that they would get used to it.

‘Takes you back, guv,’ Vince said, once they were out of earshot.

Both had seen too many scenes like this, as serving soldiers in what had been Mesopotamia and was now Iraq, a part of the world more soaked in blood over time than even this. Vince had many times reflected that you could not walk a yard in that benighted part of the world without treading on the bones of the dead – Arabs, Armenians, Kurds, and even Turks, and it was made no better by the presence of Europeans – the killing just became industrial.

‘The mayor, a left socialist, was the first to die,’ said Florencia, who had been part of the questioning of the survivors, that carried out as the bodies were cut down and laid out with those shot or bayoneted. ‘Followed by anyone who had served on the local committees.’

She pointed to the other ubiquitous feature found in a Spanish village square, the taberna. ‘Once they had strung up the owner they drank his wine, every drop, and then the spirits.’

There was no need to say that fired up by that, the men who had done this would then have gone on the rampage – that was how it went, first the settling of perceived scores, followed by a celebration and inebriation, leading to outright sack, the fate of captured towns and villages since time immemorial; knowledge did not, however, make it acceptable.