Cartagena

Well, onto game two now.

We're heading to Cartagena for this evening's kickoff.

We'll join the road.

We'll see you there.

We did, and we waved goodbye to our friend Russ who was only coming to the one game with us, and we hopped straight in the car, straight to Cartagena which is so easy to get to.

Basically just one big straight road, and like you say, get yourself a decent hire car out of Alicante Airport and you will be absolutely flying down, I think it was the A7.

We're not gonna get into roads onto this bit.

However, we got to the Estadio Cartagonova which minus the, uh, the puddles and the fence work was an absolutely stunning ground and plenty of Aguilas fans for what is a little bit of a derby game.

They employed skillful engineers to make pumps and raise the water, which always accumulates in mines and prevents their being worked to any great depth unless the miners have a considerable degree of scientific and mechanical skill.

They founded a city here, which they called New Carthage, Nova Carthago.

They fortified and garrisoned this city, and made it the center of their operations in Spain.

This city is called Cartagena to this day.

He told them that he was intending some great designs for the ensuing spring, which might take them to a great distance and keep them for a long time absent from Spain, and he would accordingly give them the intervening time to visit their families and their homes, and to arrange their affairs.

This act of kind consideration and confidence renewed the attachment of the soldiers to their commander, and they returned to his camp in the spring not only with new strength and vigor, but with redoubled attachment to the service in which they were engaged.

Hannibal, after sending home his soldiers, retired himself to New Carthage, which, as will be seen by the map, is further west than Saguntum, where he went into winter quarters and devoted himself to the maturing of his designs.

Besides the necessary preparations for his own march, he had to provide for the government of the countries that he should leave.

Only in that very year, 218, the Romans had established, uh, two new colonies on the Po, and he wanted to know what sort of a welcome he would have if and when he arrived.

And it was when his agent sent to Northern Italy returned to his capital at Cartagena in Spain, uh, with a favorable, uh, report that he finally decided to move off in June.

[suspenseful music]

And so Hannibal left Spain with about 90,000 troops and a strike force of 34 elephants.

And second, that it was his only hope.

That was the only strategy that offered any chance of beating the Romans.

Seven years after Cannae, the Roman army in Spain took Hannibal's power base at Cartagena.

In doing so, they cut off what had become the Carthaginians' main source of wealth, and Hannibal's only source of reinforcements.

I think, like I say, I'm sure we'll talk about Hercules and, uh, Real Jaén very, very shortly, but that was a brilliant game.

However, Cartagena for me, I have fallen in love with Cartagena for many a reason.

One being it's one of the best atmospheres I've heard in a very long time, especially down at this level.

It was absolutely cracking and in a brilliant stadium.

The holy grail exists.

The myths are true.

It is in Cartagena.

Get yourself down there and go and get yourself Alhambra Reserva on draft.

October 14, 1936, the first International Brigade trainees organized by the Communist International arrive in Albacete via France.

The first shipment of arms from the Soviet Union reaches Cartagena October 4th.

It includes both modern and obsolete small arms and ammunition, most meaningfully the latest T-26 tanks, BT-3 armored cars, and quote-unquote volunteers.

so there's a lot of like if you'll remember from our small arms of the spanish civil war um episode there's a lot of obsolete like world war one and pre-world war one small arms and like odd stuff but there's tons of maxim machine guns and then in the t26s and the bt3s they have they're fully outfitted with um uh what are what are they is it the tp 28 light machine guns the um the pan fed ones i know i'm getting those it's dash 28 whatever it is so there's actually a fair amount of like sophisticated brand new stuff and they start also bringing um uh anti-tank guns over but But again, they took every bit of their gold and silver reserves that were left, like three quarters of it, and they were absolutely not delivering that level of material to them.

So he got together a great army and built a fleet of three hundred ships to carry his troops to Carthage.

But he first marched his men across the Alps, through Gaul, and down to the seaboard of Carthagena, in Spain, where his fleet was stationed.

He took this route because he expected to add to his forces as he went along.

Before sailing with his army for Carthage, he wished very much to see with his own eyes what sort of people the Vandals were.

They employed skillful engineers to make pumps and raise the water, which always accumulates in mines and prevents their being worked to any great depth unless the miners have a considerable degree of scientific and mechanical skill.

They founded a city here which they called New Carthage, Nova Carthago.

They fortified and garrisoned this city and made it the center of their operations in Spain.

This city is called Cartagena to this day.

He told them that he was intending some great designs for the ensuing spring, which might take them to a great distance and keep them for a long time absent from Spain, and he would accordingly give them the intervening time to visit their families and their homes and to arrange their affairs.

This act of kind consideration and confidence renewed the attachment of the soldiers to their commander, and they returned to his camp in the spring not only with new strength and vigor, but with redoubled attachment to the service in which they were engaged.

Hannibal, after sending home his soldiers, retired himself to New Carthage, which, as will be seen by the map, is further west than Saguntum, where he went into winter quarters and devoted himself to the maturing of his designs.

Besides the necessary preparations for his own march, he had to provide for the government of the countries that he should leave.

So he got together a great army and built a fleet of three hundred ships to carry his troops to Carthage.

But he first marched his men across the Alps through Gaul and down to the seaboard of Cartagena in Spain, where his fleet was stationed.

He took this route because he expected to add to his forces as he went along.

Before sailing with his army for Carthage, he wished very much to see with his own eyes what sort of people the Vandals were, and whether they were so powerful at home as was generally believed.

The emperor left Carthage after having got as much information as he could.

But Genseric did not wait for the Roman fleet to come to attack him in his capital.

When he got word that it was in the Bay of Cartagena, he sailed there with a fleet of his own and in a single day burned or sank nearly all the Roman ships.

After this, the Vandals became more than ever the terror of the Mediterranean and all the countries bordering upon it.

Yeah.

[laughs] So [laughs] I, I flipped out and I told my now wife, I just said, "Hey," um, who actually, part of her ancestry is, like her great-grandmother was born in Cartagena, Spain.

So she's always wanted to visit, and I said, "We have to do this." It was right at the end of the s- of the school year, so we, we booked our tickets.

And the trip started planned around this Airbag concert in Madrid, and we built the rest of the trip around it.