The new guide to the cemetery of Nuestro Padre Jesús is dedicated to Murcian emigrants in Europe

Presentation of the Our Father Jesus cemetery guide. / Vicente Vicens / AGM

The Councilor for Health and Digital Transformation, Esther Nevado, explains that with it “you can discover the history of men and women who one day left their native Murcia in search of a better future for their families and who returned to the municipality”

The Councilor for Health and Digital Transformation of the Murcia City Council, Esther Nevado, presented on Tuesday the new guide to the Nuestro Padre Jesús municipal cemetery, which is dedicated to ‘Murcian Emigrants in Europe’, according to municipal sources in a statement.

In collaboration with the Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Murcia and the Murcian Society of Anthropology, the Consistory publishes this visit guide in which “you can discover the history of men and women who one day left their native Murcia in search of a better future for their families and that they returned to the municipality, now being buried in the municipal cemetery”, explained the councillor.

Nevado added that “these testimonies help us to better understand the people who come from other countries looking for shelter in our land of Murcia.” Thus, the lives of 20 Murcians who emigrated to Europe during the postwar period and until the 1980s are collected, the main destinations being France, Switzerland and Germany.

With this initiative, the Murcia City Council seeks to promote the cemetery of Nuestro Padre Jesús as a cultural, meeting and concord space among Murcians. The guide is prepared thanks to the research work of Anthropology students from European Societies, within the framework of the Learning Research Teaching Innovation Project, of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Murcia.

The guide collects the main aspects of the life of José Gomicia Cantos, industrial worker and caretaker; Enrique García Quesada, painter and decorator; Pedro Escribano Carrión and María Cantos Vargas, mason and social worker; Leandro García López, electrician and commercial; Agustín Tudela Cayuela, industrial worker; Antonio León Abellán, assault guard and industrial worker and Manuel Murcia Morales, farmer, industrial worker and doorman.

Also from Narciso Rodríguez Pujalte, farmer, industrial and hospitality worker; Ángel Porras Serrano, industrial worker; Erich Harald Seifert, engineer; Agustín Sánchez Trigueros, industrial worker and politician; Fulgencio Sevilla Fernández, salesman; Carmelo Cano Cano and Milagros Molina Martínez, carpenter and housewife; Josefina Campoy Cerezo, industrial and service worker; Esteban Valcárcel Palacios, bank employee; Nikolaos Karabessinis, mechanic, and Ángeles Hernández Pérez and José Fernández Arnaldo, industrial workers.

Murcia City Council offers seven guides on people buried in the municipal cemetery of Nuestro Padre Jesús, which can be consulted on the website ‘https://ayuntamientomurcia-salud.es/index.php/areas/cementerio’. Specifically, these documents are about writers and artists; 19th century elites; Murcian women in memory; protagonists of progress; other Murcians, the traces of Europeanization; the influenza epidemic of 1918 in Murcia and Murcian emigrants in Europe.