On July 28, 1938, the 850 men of Requetés regiment of Our Lady of Montserrat arrived with urgency from Extremadura in wagons of transport of livestock to Vilalba dels Arcs. Franco had entrusted them the defence of the village. During three days and three nights they refused the furious attacks of the republican army until August 2. Weeks afterwards, on 19 August, they launched a big attack against the republican positions in front of them, in the height 481, an attack where they did not receive coverage. It was a slaughter. At the end of conflict, only 109 requetés were in active.

Vilalba dels Arcs is together with the small aragonese village named Codo the two ‘martyrs' villages of the catalonian requetés, the two villages where suffered the main number of casualties in several clashes, in some cases, heroic and suicidal. Still today in Vilalba dels Arcs are numerous the sites that remember us the war and the presence of those requetés.

Casa Coll museum

The catalonian requetés have a museum in the village, the only of this military unit and the only in the Terres de l’Ebre region devoted to an only unit. The museum is situated to the upper flat of the noble house of Casa Coll and was inaugurated in 2001. The permanent exhibition over the requetés is very complete. It shows images of the fronts of war where the regiment struggled between 1937 and 1939, documentation and personal objects of some of his members, projectiles of artillery, uniforms, alegoric pictures, standards, emblems and explanatory panels with the history of the regiment and the listing of the fallen soldiers in the different fronts of the Spanish Civil War (320 of a total of 2.000 listed).It closes the exhibition a small chapel chaired by an image of the Virgin of Montserrat and a library with exclusive documentation of the regiment. The museum opens by appointment.

 Via crucis of Quatre Camins

The second site that link with the memory of the requetés are the two monuments raised in memory of the soldiers of the regiment fallen in the front of Quatre Camins, in the entrance of the village. In this area, the Brotherhood of the regiment erected a monument in shape of cross in the defensive line of the requetés -Quatre Camins/Hill 427- and a second, in the offensive line of the republican brigades -Punta Targa/Hill 481-. The two monuments are joined by a way of a hundred of meters, that crosses the road between Vilalba dels Arcs and the Fatarella. The way is flanked by monoliths with the name sculpted of the requetés knocked down in this front of war. The brotherhood of the regiment considers this way like a via crucis that join two monuments, built in the franquist period like an example of reconciliation between the soldiers of the two armies. At present, the historical space is surrounded of wind turbines that distort notably the integrity of this ancient field of battle.

The brotherhood is responsible of the maintenance of the museum and the via crucis. Also, they organized each two years a meeting in Vilalba dels Arcs to homage the fallen soldiers. This same act also it celebrates each two years in the aragonese village of Codo.

During the dictatorship, the human rests of the soldiers fallen of the requetés of the regiment of Our Lady of Montserrat were exhumed and moved to the mountain of Montserrat where rest in a mausoleum erected in his honour to few metres of the Monastery of Montserrat.