Axarquía square named after lighthouse keeper who was a Civil War hero

Jennie Rhodes

Torre del Mar

Friday, 31 March 2023, 12:23

The square around Torre del Mar’s old lighthouse, located between Calle Copo and Calle Barracas de was renamed Plaza del Farero Anselmo Vilar García on Thursday, 30 March.

It has been named in memory of the courageous lighthouse keeper who, in the early morning of 6 and 7 February 1937, as thousands of people fled Malaga during the Civil War, in an episode known as the ‘Desbandá’, kept the lighthouse switched off to distract the German, Spanish and Italian warships and planes and hide the refugees.

However, Anselmo Vilar García was killed by Franco's nationalist troops when word reached them about what the lighthouse keeper had done.

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Vélez-Málaga town hall voted unanimously to name the square after the heroic lighthouse keeper during a council meeting in November 2022, which approved the naming of the square with his name.

Councillor for infrastructure, Juan Garcia, defined Vilar García’s decision as "an act of heroism and humanity that ended up costing him his life for being a good person". Garcia went on to say with the naming of the square, the people of Torre del Mar would "have a greater knowledge of its history”.

It was researcher Jesús Hurtado who highlighted and championed the lighthouse keeper’s story: “The war put, unwittingly, the fate of thousands of people in his hands. He gave them shelter by not showing the position of the lighthouse and hiding a mass of women, the elderly, children who did not understand ideologies but fear and terror. And then he paid for it with his life," Hurtado recalled.

The researcher went on to say that the naming of the square is "definitive proof that we want to have a free, new and unprejudiced town in which our own people are not forgotten by our own society. Labeling this town with names of good people improves and makes Torre del Mar bigger," he said.

Lourdes Cabello who made the plaque for the square alluded to "the human fraternity of the people and the anonymous heroes" who "society must preserve”.