For decades during the dictatorship, Cambedo da Raia, in the municipality of Chaveswas considered a cursed village. Its inhabitants, now numbering only a few hundred but once three times that number, were considered a people of mischief, harboring outlaws and common criminals whose company was to be avoided.
Cambedo da Raia, the story of the heroic people of the "cursed village".
The Spanish Civil War had officially ended in 1939, but Franco's regime was still looking for Galician antifascist guerillas. Some of them were hiding in Cambedo da Raia and other villages in the Trás-os-Montes border area. At dawn on December 20, 1946, the village woke up surrounded by dozens of GNRand even a few PIDEs, all supported by the Spanish Guardia Civil. Then came reinforcements from the PSP and even the army.
Mortar fire rained down on the town; a bombed-out house can still be seen in the town today. House-to-house searches took place, as did direct confrontations between guerrillas and the authorities; two of the wanted guerrillas ended up dead, while a third was arrested.
Around two dozen villagers were arrested, accused for over a year of collaborating with the anti-Franco resistance. Two GNR soldiers were also reportedly killed in the clashes. One of the last maquis created at the end of the Spanish Civil War was located in the border zone between Trás-os-Montes and Galicia. Anarchist, socialist and communist guerrillas took refuge in the villages on the Portuguese side, attacking Franco's targets on the other side of the border.
On December 20, 1946, one of these villages was Cambedo da Raia, and following a denunciation, the village was surrounded by hundreds of Portuguese and Spanish soldiers, Pides, GNR, Guardia Fiscale and others. The battle of Cambedo resulted in the death of two guerrillas, Juan Salgado Rivera and Bernardino Garcia, who would have preferred to commit suicide rather than surrender. Two republican guards, José Joaquim and José Teixeira Nunes, were killed, a few wounded, including a girl, and eight Galicians and 55 Portuguese were arrested, including eighteen from Cambedo.
The story was almost hidden at the time. Today, the details are becoming known. It's another important moment of border solidarity between the Portuguese people and the Spanish resistance fighters, as happened in other border areas, such as Barrancos.
