“Dear friend, our dear friend, dear friend Pepe…” thus begin the 1,153 letters that more than fifty women, mostly Asturian, exchanged from exile, between 1939 and 1975, with José Barrerio, better known as ‘the teacher of Sama’ and general secretary of the Asturian Socialist Commission.
Adela and Agustina Ramos, Gloria and Amparo Velasco, Aurea Riestra, Amada, Selina and Libertad Asenjo, Amelia Guerra, Pilar Santaeufemia and Rosario Angélica Gabancho are some of the women who found in this epistolary relationship with the person who brought together Asturian socialism in the Catalan exile. , first, and French, later, providing them with information about their relatives, about the situation in Spain after the fall of the Republic, or advice and hope to move forward and trust in the return.
After the fall of the ‘northern front’ in 1937, it is estimated that around 7,000 people had to leave Asturias for exile. They did it on ships that, first of all, took them to Catalonia, after passing through France, except for those that were heading to what was then the Soviet Union (USSR). That was the starting point of the epistolary relationship that was established between José Barreiro, general secretary of the Asturian Socialist Commission, and a total of 56 women, mostly Asturian, who had had to leave the country after the victory of the Francoist side. .
United by the emptiness that invades the hearts that have been forced to abandon the land, having left most of them with relatives in Asturias, and punished by the history of the losers, the Barreiro Foundation project gives names and surnames to all these women who kept alive, until the end, the hope of being able to return to a free and democratic Spain, the one they were forced to abandon definitively in 1939.
José Barreiro was clear from the beginning about the importance of generating a network of support, hope and care among all those people who, like him, had their lives taken away by Francoism and had to start from scratch in a strange and hostile country, far away, in many cases, their loved ones.
Through these letters, Barreiro managed requests for help in cases of illness, to find work or to clandestinely cross the border. But these letters were also a way of sending money, both to relatives who had stayed in Spain and suffered from Franco’s repression, and to those who were in exile trying to get ahead. This money was organized into two funds: the “solidarity fund” and the “fund for Asturias.”
The letters also served to provide psychological support and maintain spirit and hope, among the Asturian socialists in exile, to be able to return to Spain one day, and Sama’s teacher was in charge of that, as explained by Carmen Suárez, director. of the José Barreiro Foundation and coordinator of the project, together with a team made up of the foundation’s trustees, Lourdes Cuetos, Azucena García, María Teresa Montero, María José Ramos, Cristian Rangel.
At the center of this story, the voices of these 56 women narrating their desires and hopes, and a dedicated Barreiro, who responded, always quick and fast, with his typewriter, from his different homes in the south of France. While keeping spirits high, Barreiro also worked, like a good teacher, on the education of the youngest, preparing them for their return to Spain, when the time came.
As the director of the Foundation assures, the letters bring together the sensitivities and different situations that these women experienced in exile. Although the story of each of them has its particular uniqueness, the case of “the Russians” is very important for Carmen Suárez, as they referred to Pilar Santaeufemia and Rosario Angélica Gabancho. The first was Asturian, from the same town as Barreiro, Sama, and the second was Cantabrian, from Castro Urdiales, both exiled to the USSR.
Rosario Angélica was a child of the war, who left for Stalin’s Russia at the age of twelve and contacted Barreiro through Pilar, one of the teachers who accompanied the children on that trip and who ended up staying with them in Russia. Gabancho corresponded with José Barreiro between 1945 and 1960, with whom he established an intense family bond that also included his wife, Felicidad. The case of “the Russians” was so important because upon their return to Spain they were able to tell the true story of what they had experienced there, in another regime of terror, hard work and difficult life.
Although most of the women who corresponded with Barreiro were in France, not all of them decided to stay in the neighboring country and there were some who decided to continue on their way to South America. This is the case of Gloria Velasco, who arrived in Chile aboard the Winnipeg, the ship that set sail from the French coast thanks to the efforts of the poet Pablo Neruda.
Gloria was the first and only, to date, mayor of the Asturian council of Parres. Friend, not sister, as initially thought when sharing a last name, of Amparo Velasco, with whom she arrived in Catalonia and later in France. The case of both is relevant for two reasons: firstly, they have a very significant role in the organization of aid for the Red Relief; secondly, because of the terrible experience they had in the sanatorium in which they were “confined” when they crossed to the south of France.
Another of the family sagas that had an epistolary relationship with Barreiro were the Arias Iglesias sisters, Nieves and Ana, a poet who wrote under the signature Ana del Valle, and the latter’s daughter, Rosario. Carmen Suárez highlights her political and feminist militancy.
Although they were all united by the sadness and helplessness of life in exile, some left from even more difficult situations, like that of Áurea Riestra, who arrived alone in Catalonia with five children, because her husband had been shot, along with another of her children, in San Esteban de las Cruces (Oviedo), and another daughter and son condemned in Spain, according to what she herself narrated in her letters. Despite the precarious situation, he managed to raise some money for the funds that Barreiro had set up. Áurea’s story is, according to Suárez, “the story of survival in the most absolute precariousness.”
That of the Ramos sisters is the story of commitment and contribution to the cause. This is clear from the letters that they together sent to Sama’s teacher and from the monthly record over the years. Coming from San Martín del Rey Aurelio and from a family that was harshly retaliated against, Agustina and Adela were sellers of raffle tickets, photos and information brochures, which made them stand out for their solidarity and involvement from France.
The health problems, derived from the precarious conditions in which they lived, added to the family uprooting that these women already experienced and caused disillusionment to take hold of them, despite Barreiro’s attempts to combat it. This was the case of Amelia Guerra, from Gijón whose father died ill, in Lyon, where she lived poorly with Amelia and her mother, Amalia, while several of her siblings had been sent to Russia. Some of the members of this family, like Amelia and her father, had gone through refugee camps where they had developed respiratory problems that would accompany them for life and that, in the case of the father, had ended up causing his death.
Comrade Barreiro
This project is a clear example that, in the exile of the Civil War, Asturian women took a step forward for the first time, assuming prominence for themselves, not like on other occasions in which they had been simply as companions of the men. . With Letters from exiles: The legacy of words and writing (1939-1975) It not only seeks to address the political, economic, personal and social context of a generation that was forced to leave Asturias in their twenties or thirties and, in many cases, was never able to return to their land, but also to shed light on the history of the Asturian exile.
Furthermore, with this project, the Barreiro Foundation opens the door to the possibility of receiving information about what happened to some of these women, either through family members or acquaintances, since they ended up losing track of them in Mexico, Chile , the USSR or Argentina, when they interrupted the epistolary relationship with Barreiro.
The project Letters from exiles: The legacy of words and writing (1939-1975), materialized in the book coordinated by Carmen Suárez, is completed with Comrade Barreiroa podcast directed by journalist Patricia Martínez, which is based on the selection of some of the letters sent by twenty of these women, to whom a voice has been given, through the dramatization of their letters, helping even more to that their story permeates society.
The initiative also has an exhibition, posted on the Foundation’s website although it has not yet seen the light physically, made up of panels created by the cartoonist Alfonso Zapico.
The next objective of the José Barreiro Foundation, facing next year 2025 when, in addition, it will be 50 years since the death of the person who gave it its name, in the Pyrenean town of Chaum, will be that the remains of this Asturian who did not manage to return to their land rest, finally, in their native Sama.
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