Meeting with survivors and daughters of the exile

28 October 2022

Friday 28 October saw the taking place of the meeting with survivors and daughters of the exile in the CEULAJ assembly room.

Three survivors from the so-called “Carretera de la Muerte” (Road of Death) were present: a person born in France, daughter of a family that fled on the Carretera de la Muerte, and three daughters of the exile.

Each of them responded to a question from the moderator of the Meeting after introducing each person with some details from their biography and their experience.

Ana Pomares, 96, had her 9th birthday on 7 February 1937, to which she remembers many details of her exiles to Almería, Orán, Barcelona and Valencia. She especially remembers the fear of the bombings, hunger and uncertainty.

Manuel Triano, 86, 6 months old and in his mother’s arms when they fled to Almería and Alicante, where they had to live in a cave to survive. His mother told him about the tragedy they lived through and he places great emphasis on the fact it was not just the war that was a massacre, but also the postwar and the Franco dictatorship.

María Hidalgo Guerrero, 91, fled from Málaga with many members of her family, she was 5 and during the journey were lost into different groups. 3 years later they found her mother again. She tells of the fear they went through and underlines the silence that followed.

Annie González de Haro then intervened, born in France where her family found themselves after fleeing from Málaga to Catalonia, then to France in 1939. Her older brother, still alive, has told her throughout her life about the horrors of the flights. She insists on the importance of the testimonies in order not to forget the massacre.

María José Barreiro, a Congress attendee, told the story of her family who fled from Antequera to Málaga to join La Desbandá. She talked about the silence that surrounded her family until she started to investigate in 2007.

3 women, daughters of the exile, also spoke.

Anastasia Tsackos Moratalla, daughter of an international brigadista from Greece and a Spanish woman from Albacete, born in a concentration camp in France, was raised by her grandparents in Spain where she was considered stateless until she wed. She told us about the harshness of a society that rejected her for being a daughter of “rojos”.

Amparo Sánchez Monroy, born in France, daughter of a Republican soldier. She was in a concentration camp, a prison in France, and addressed the topic of loss of identity that exile implies.

Lastly, Carmen Negrín Ferret spoke, granddaughter of Juan Negrín López, the last president of the 2nd Republic who reflected on the importance of education and the need to recover the Democratic Memory in Spain.