Where is Robert Hale Merriman?

On Friday, the session will begin with a conference about the Lincoln Battalion, by Anna Martí, and the presentation of the documentary “Els darrers dies de Robert Hale Merriman”. On Saturday, April 7, DIDPATRI, with the collaboration of the City Council of Corbera dʼEbre, will remember the American commander with a commemorative plaque by the sculptor Mar H. Pongiluppi, in Corbera dʼEbre. The ceremony will take place at 12.30 noon.

Over this last year, an interdisciplinary team formed by researchers, archaeologists and local scholars, coordinated by DIDPATRI, tried to find the remains of Robert Hale Merriman, brigadier in the 15th International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. These tasks were carried out in the area of Corbera dʼEbre, where the major was believed to be killed, but there were no results. Therefore, the researchers are still thinking: where is Merriman?

Robert Hale Merriman was born in 1908 in California (United States). He graduated in Economics at the University of Berkeley, and he joined the Reserve Officersʼ Training Corps. In 1935, he left to study the Soviet agricultural model, and while he was living in the Soviet Union, the Spanish Civil War broke out. In 1937, Merriman went to Spain, where he trained other volunteers and escalated positions up to the Chief of the 15th International Brigade. The most popular version says he was taken as a prisoner in Corbera dʼEbre and was killed on April 2, 1938. Some years later, his wife, who lived in the United States, wrote the book American Commander in Spain: Robert Hale Merriman and the Abraham Lincoln Brigades.

At the end of the year, a copy of the commemorative plaque will be installed at UC Berkeley (United States) to respond the demand of the Rector, Carol Tecla Christ, since Merriman was a student and lecturer in this institution.

The research study carried out by DIDPATRI in some of its studies on the Spanish Civil War is a unique model of public archaeology and research action: from research to socialization of knowledge on the bases of didactics and memory practices.