In June 1937, the Northern Front of the Spanish Civil War collapsed for the Republicans. Approximately half a million Republicans and civilians fled for their lives in Spain, but possibly up to 150,000 of them were Basques, an extraordinary proportion in the overall account. Some of them, including many "gudaris", crossed the border to the Labourd. They were confined next to Bayonne, while the French government set about constructing internment camps at the feet of the northern Pyrenees aimed at sheltering the civilians and Republicans fleeing from the Basque front, as well as Catalonia, stranded in Roussillon. Next to Gurs (outer fringes of Soule, in Bearn), an internment camp was established in Mars-April 1939. It lasted up to 1945.