Mateo Arbeloa and Josefina Muru had just had their first child, Víctor Manuel, just 7 months ago when the Civil War broke out. They lived in Mañeru, a small town in Navarra dedicated to agriculture, a traditional bastion of Carlism and where faith and religious practices had an important weight. On July 19, 1936, Mateo went to war as a Carlist volunteer. Josefina stayed in the towntaking care of her child, in a precarious economic situation.
His story is neither exceptional nor more tragic than so many others in a conflict with traumas that still linger almost 90 years later. What makes this story unique are the letters that this young couple exchanged, between fear, death and hope. It is an epistolary legacy that allows us to authentically relive the first ten months of the war.
Throughout her life, Josefina lovingly kept those sheets of paper, often recycled and written in pencil, that were written before Mateo died from a gunshot wound in a hospital in Vitoria. In the intimacy of that correspondence, Mateo from the front and Josefina from the rear, They collected without censorship the experiences of a war that would mark this family forever.
His son Víctor Manuel Arbeloa published eleven of his father’s letters in 2002. Her mother read them from time to time, getting sick of crying, and thought it would be a nice surprise for her. But Josefina died before seeing them printed.
Two decades later, Pablo Larraz Andía and María Pilar Sáez de Albéniz have compiled this emotional testimony for the first time in the book ‘The last letters of the requeté‘, edited by Almuzara. Its authors believe that it is perhaps the best crusading epistolary collection of our civil war that has ever been published.
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Script and voiceover: Mónica Arrizabalaga, Andrea Morán
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Sound Helper: Íñigo Martín Ciordia
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Mounting: Andrea Moran
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Collaboration: Pablo Larraz Andía and María Pilar Sáez de Albéniz
All episodes of ‘We Are in History’ can be found on the main audio platforms, such as Spotify, Ivoox, Apple PodcastsAmazon Music and We could. They are also available in YouTube. The next episode, in 15 days.
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