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Nabarralde | Nabarra Papers
French
Police Close Miarritze Beaches
Blanca
Garza.
Erosion along the
waterfront in the city of Miarritze (Biarritz is its well-known
French name) in Nabarra's truncated territory of Lapurdi
under French administration, has exposed hundreds of World
War II ammunition shells, forcing police to close the beach
this week.
Government workers
have scooped up more than 1,600 anti-craft shells over the past
five months, removing 160 of them on Thursday alone.
The shells began
to appear on the beaches in and around Miarritze, one of the
Basque Country's most beautiful cities, at the end of November
1998.
Firemen planned
during low tide Friday to use jets of water from fire hoses
to bring the rest of the shells to the surface so the beaches,
including the main one at Miarritze (Hondartza Handia), can
be opened again.
The munitions are
37 millimiter German anti-aircraft shells that were left behind
when the Nazis retreated from southwestern France toward the
end of the war.
Northern Basque
Country under French jurisdiction was occupied by the Nazis
in the 1940s. More than 12,000 people were sent to concentration
camps.
Miarritze (pop.
28,800) is on the Bay of Biscay in the Atlantic side of the
Basque Country --just south of the border with France and north
of the border with Spain.
April 1999
Blanca Garza
is a writer and political activist. She lives in Nabarra with
her husband and children.
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