Museu Memorial de l'Exili

I bought a bit more sports' attire at Decathlon in Perpignan today before driving over the border to La Jonquera.  I had forgotten that today is a jour de pont between a Bank holiday and the weekend and that large numbers of people take it off.  It was a mistake to take the old road.  There was a 4km tailback to the border so I turned around and took the motorway.  La Jonquera is always busy either for the budget shopping or as the trucking and prostitution capital of Europe, its largest brothel having 80 rooms and 200 prostitutes.  I actually visited the gem of this frontier town, the museum of the Retirada.  The museum gives a full insight into the cross border evacuation of the refugees fleeing Franco's Nationalist troops at the end of the Spanish Civil War and their subsequent internment in France or, in many cases, in the death camps. It is a shame that all explanations are only in Catalan.   I did some shopping too but not for the booze and fags that are the lifeblood of the supermarkets.  My shopping list was 10 litres of extra virgin olive oil, fig cake, different types of nougat, haribo sweets, biscuits, various bags of nuts, ham, chorizo sausage, washing liquids and face creams for Mrs TT.  All these are worth going to Spain for.  However, it was blowing a hooley and any savings I might have made were offset by the man who let his heavy van door smash into my passenger door and then raced off before I could get out of the car to remonstrate with him about the sizeable dent he had caused.  Mrs TT tried to get his number but he sped off too quickly and I doubt anyway if the Spanish police would have any motivation to chase up a French driver.