One day, after a family meal and with the television on, suddenly his grandmother said it: “I’ve been there.” In the image was the Elna Maternity Hospital, an institution founded in France by the Swiss nurse Elisabeth Eidenbenz that took in pregnant refugees. Something that left the entire family stunned because no one knew that fact, “not even his daughters,” he explains. Marc Solanes Calderon. «I began to pull the thread with many problems and what was a small report began to expand until I discovered a story that went much further and that the truly important story fell on the figure of María Ferrer, my great-grandmother.». Four and a half years later, the journalist and writer has just published ‘The Girls of Elna’ (Pol.len Edicions)which presents this Thursday (7:00 p.m.) at the Cálamo de Zaragoza bookstore.
The result is an exercise in brilliant literary journalism that reconstructs the lost history of a family and, specifically, of María Ferrer, a milliner and activist during the civil war: «It is a vindication against the silence to which many women have been subjected throughout history and the silence of their descendants who have come to see heroic stories as something demonic. In fact, the family had been informed about María Ferrer that she was a selfish woman who did not care about her family and who preferred politics. In the end, the book is a tribute to her and shows that she fought for her country, but mainly for her daughters so that they could live in a free country and have a future,” explains the author.
voluntary forgetfulness
In the family until Marc Solanes began to investigate, it was a hidden topic, but why? «It was a story that had been forgotten on purpose in order to survive all this pain. Only the girls from Elna, Teresa, Luisa and Nuria knew her., who had not even told their children. A taboo was created so that they could move forward and that this pain would not destroy their lives. “Everything to be able to survive all of this and move forward became an exercise in pure survival,” says the writer.
To tell this story, the author has opted for literary journalism: «I wanted to explain this story from a journalistic perspective and, above all, a very contrasting one, Behind it there is a great investigation that allows me not to have to fictionalize the story.
The latest news about María Ferrer places her in Zaragoza, in a house in the Arrabal neighborhood from where, taking the name Nicolasa, she writes to her daughters before nothing more is known about her. «Presenting the book now in Zaragoza is a way of closing the circle. I was in the building from which she sent her last letters although there is no trace left about María or that supposed Nicolasa. It is a way to close the circle that began in that hidden house and I now return to Zaragoza now with the book already published. “This is a tribute to María and her entire history,” concludes Marc Solanes Calderón himself.
