Miguel A. De Gálvez

My name is Miguel A. De Gálvez, and I am the son of Fernando, who wrote these memoirs. The photo sghows him at his wedding in 1949.

He wrote a memoir, from which I have taken the part referring to the Civil War, so that his children would see how his life had been. He wrote them in the 20th century, in the 1970s. We have always had them in our house. He told us somethings that he didn’t write down.

His best friend during the war was a Jew by the name of Aharaon. All soldiers [in Franco’s army] were required to attend mass at the front, except for Aharon, who was not obliged to. A year before my father met up him again.

She also told me that when the military rebelled, the leftists killed the owners of the textile business where most people in the neighbourhood worked and dragged their bodies through streets while they sang. She also told us that one day as she was going to school with her sister a bomb fell nearby, killing two people. The bomb fell on a can factory near the station.

My mother only told us about her experience of the war. She was 12 when it started. She fled along the Almería road when the Nationalists entered Málaga. She told me that she lived in the working-class neighbourhood of Huelin. My grandfather didn’t want to flee with his three daughters, but members of the committee were going from house to house telling them that the Nationalists were bringing Moors, and that they cut the heads off the children they found. This caused the entire neighbourhood to flee to Almería. My mother also told me that there were bodies in the ditches along the road. My grandfather stopped halfway to Almería and the family hid along with some other families. The ships were bombing [the road] all night. Then they went back home.