Marie-Françoise Pardillos Aznar, Conrado’s daughter

After translating the papers my father left me, I have been able to reconstruct his itinerary. 

At the bottom of page 1223, there are some surnames: Pardillos Aznar, and one first name, Conrado. They are yours, the young man on the left of the photo with your hands in your pockets.

On 27 October 1940, the Teruel military court listed you as DISAFFECTED and convicted you of “helping the rebellion”. You were 19.

DISAFFECTED: a category in which they put people who were hostile to Francoism and unwilling to repent in any way. 

Being DISAFFECTED meant being subjected to special vigilance. You, your family, your Friends as well. Watched by the priest, neighbours were encouraged to denounce neighbours.

You were sent to the Adult Reformatory in Alicante. Perhaps there you spoke with the poet Gabriel Celaya, who said that “poetry is a weapon loaded with the future”. Perhaps there you met Miguel Hernández, another poet, who wrote “Andalusians from Jaén”.

Before that you were interned in the Albatera camp. You were sent to that inhuman place, the Spanish Auschwitz: executions, no more than four meals per week, and horrible sanitary conditions), after being captured by the Fascists in the port of Alicante.

Amidst total chaos, at least 15,000 people were trapped there for a number days, members of the defeated Republican army, families, women, and children. In the fortress that overlooks the port, people were out in the full sun with nothing to eat or drink. From then on, your constant companion, hunger, never abandoned you.

The Reformatory was followed by two years in jail in Bilbao: “We were covered in fleas!”. You were taken there in a train similar to those that crossed Europe heading to the German camps. No less than 180 places of internment, prisons, or camps in Spain.

DISAFFECTED. That’s what you remained. Neither confession nor conversion nor repentance. Nevertheless, it likely this got you a reduced sentence.

Last would come the disciplinary labour battalion working on the Viella tunnel. You were freed at the end of 1945 and put under house arrest with your parents. Crossing the Valencia plain on your way to Alicante, your father told you: “Don’t go there; you’ll end up in the water”. “He was right!” I should have listened to him!” Then almost six years passed.

The local office of the agency that found work for freed prisoners got you a job in a brick factory. Twelve, thirteen hours a day shoveling dirt. And still that persistent hunger. Then, the neighbours’ little girl who urinated in the container on the ground. “Look, we ate it anyway”.

Martial law was ended in 1948. Without telling your mother, you leave. From farm to farm. You walk at night. You sleep in abandoned buildings, under the stars. Avoiding cities and villages, hiding in the ditches where the people still being denounced are taken for a little walk.

Walking, travelling. You followed the route of that group of anarchists who had passed through your village in September 1936. From Teruel you said: “At times we are so tired thatwe could sleep even with bombs falling”. 

The silhouette of the mountains grows larger on the horizon. Hidden in the snow, you waited. “Tomorrow, before dawn, while the Civil Guard is still sleeping, you will cross”. It’s July 1949.

In April 1964 you will retrace the trail of your history. In vain you will seek the camp of Albatera. Nothing of it remains. Today there is a monument, and each year there is a ceremony of commemoration.