Usually, during the weeks that the Book Fair lasts, everything that has to do with reading in the city of Madrid is contained in El Retiro. Booksellers, editors, distributors and promotional authors push themselves until they are exhausted for a reading public that also has the large park as a reference center. The rest of the city is left empty of events related to literature.
Or almost. With great effort, some bookstores and reading spaces maintain activity during these pre-summer weeks, as in the case we are discussing today. Next Thursday, June 6, at 7 p.m., at the Lavapiesera Contrabandos bookstore we will be able to attend the presentation of In black and white. Repression and exile during World War IIa magnificent work focused on anonymous – but unavoidable – memories created by the Catalan historian Josep Pimentel.
Pimentel himself will be there again the following Saturday at 12 noon. sharing stories of exile and repression with the community of Espacio Bellas Vistas (a social center in the Tetuán neighborhood at 22 Almansa Street), which has asked the residents of the neighborhood to come share personal and family stories with In black and white as a hanger.
And, of course, you can also find him signing books at the Fairs: on Friday, June 7 at 11 a.m. at the Indómitas Pavilion, with its publishing house Piera Papel Libros.
Josep Pimentel has published Barricade. A history of revolutionary Barcelona (2014); Enlightened critical voices (2016), on the illustrations of the newspaper Solidaridad Obrera during the first biennium of the Second Republic 1931-1933; Refugees. A story of the exile of 1939 (2018), also based on life stories; the historical novel Suitcase (2023) and, now, In Black and Whiteabout which we have been lucky enough to talk briefly with him.
–In your book, the testimony does not serve to season, but is the same common thread of the text, why did you choose this structure?
My intention with this structure is that the testimony itself is the guiding thread of the story I intend to explain. In the case that occurs to us, I explain based on testimonies the repression and exile they suffered during the period of World War II. History itself is not only a list of facts, it is also written by people with their actions, their experiences and their emotions. Life stories allow me to incorporate the emotional part of the story into the historical narrative.
To give an example, how to explain what feeling a political prisoner had in a Francoist concentration camp who had seen several of his comrades die by shooting? Well, using the first-person voice of Andreu Collell: “A shot victim does not generally have the same appearance as a dead man in the field, because the profusion of holes in that poor body denounces, in horror, the cruelty of his executioners.”
Another example, how can we explain the anguish that a person condemned to death can suffer when he says goodbye to his daughters by letter? Well, sharing a fragment of one of the letters that Agustín Villegas sent to his daughters María Gador and María Dolores from the Almería prison: “Be good and don’t stop going to school, don’t give your mother trouble and think about me as I am in you, wait for that happy day when we can hug each other and enjoy your affection. You give many hugs to all those who suffer because of me.”
I have also tried to keep my voice, that of the historian, in the background and for the protagonists of the story to really resonate.
–You have done many interviews throughout your life with militants, victims of reprisals, relatives… what does the interviewer take away from this?
The interviewer acquires the commitment that those stories, those silenced voices, those voices ignored by “Official History” stop being forgotten so that they are incorporated into our History.
It is satisfying that the interviewees trust you when explaining their life stories, and also when they push you to investigate their retaliated relatives. And thus contribute to the recovery of historical memory.
Life stories stir emotions. In many presentations, some attendees, after hearing stories that were familiar to them, have explained their story to me and in some cases have asked me to help them investigate their relatives. There was a lot of fear, and too much silence. Many stories have been lost along the way.
Another important element is to listen to older people, who are not usually taken into consideration. Listening to their life stories, collecting their testimony and paying attention to them is a way to take them to their rightful place in the History of our country.
–It is usually differentiated between history and memory, in yours they seem to be very united under a political perspective, as Miquel Izard explains in the prologue. How important is it to fight against forgetfulness today?
Taking into account that history is written by the victors and that for many decades the historical narrative has been conditioned by this fact. Fear, silence and repression have meant that, for a long time, too long, the historical narrative in this country has been in the hands of Official History and the losers of our civil war have been deliberately ignored.
It is very important to fight against this lack of memory and for this we are, in the words of the recently deceased Miquel Izard, the guardians of memory. That we claim the recovery of memory and memory in the face of silence and oblivion. In Izard’s words: “collaborate[mos] in the admirable and loyal task of saving from the haze so many people not only sacrificed, but also victims of a lack of memory that, I insist, is neither involuntary nor fortuitous.”
–According to your experience, what fundamental differences were there in the lives of those who remained on one side or the other of the Pyrenees after ’39?
The people who stayed on this side of the Pyrenees after the defeat, the vast majority, had to remain silent out of fear of repression, they went through many hardships and had to live with their executioners. But even so, they did not lose their dignity, who they were or where they came from. In many cases, silence left a void in family history, which time alone cannot heal.
On the other hand, based on my experience, those who went into exile on the other side of the Pyrenees lost everything they had, in many cases leaving their loved ones behind. In some cases they ended up meeting again. At first many were locked up in French concentration camps. Afterwards they suffered the rigors of World War II, in many cases they became actively involved in the hope that, once fascism was annihilated in France, the Franco regime in Spain would be overthrown. And as we all know, it was not like that. At the end of World War II, many of the exiles were clear that they would have to start a new life and so they did. In many cases, they did not return to their country except to visit once the dictator died.
