Letter from Paquita Artime Menéndez to José Barreiro, 1947

From the beginning of the 20th century, its strong Republicanism and the presence of a class-conscious working class with a new secular, assertive proletarian morality made Asturias a point of reference in the history of Spain. The arrival of the Second Republic increased the presence and protagonism of the Socialists in defence of democracy and the rights of women. They were part of the Popular Front in the elections of February 1936. They resisted the coup in July, and thus began the Republican resistance that led them on the road to an exile that became permanent during the Francoist dictatorship.

“Something pains me within/Deep inside…/Something that will pain me forever/A long exile/that left me wounded, separated from my people/in the middle of the world.” This is how Ana Arias Iglesias (Ana del Valle) expressed the pain of exile. She was one of 56 Asturian women who maintained a correspondence with José Barreiro (1908-1975), secretary of the Asturian Socialist Commission (CSA) that included Asturian women and men on both sides of the Atlantic, a correspondence that had remained unpublished until 2024. The 1,153 letters speak about the women, the lives, their struggles for survival, but without forgetting the solidarity and the Republic in which they had acquired rights they were not prepared to renounce.

“My mother turns 72 this month and suffers badly from rheumatism from having been in the concentration camp, she has a hernia, and hasn’t been able to work for two years”. Paquita Artime Menéndez, a dressmaker from Luanco and a member of both the Socialist Youth and of the General Workers’ Union, wrote this letter, shown here, from Carcassonne in 1947. She her mother, two brothers, and a sister lived a precarious existence and depended on support from the CSA to supplement Paquita’s earnings.

The letters sent to Barreiro speak of consolation, hope, material assistance, and emotional support, and requested solidarity. For the women and Barreiro, a long, seemingly unending exile that undermined their health and their morale, had begun. All of them lost family members, either due to separation or to prison and repression. This produced great upheaval; it was a huge change in their lives. They had to resettle in their new destiny: in France, in North Africa (Morocco or Algeria), or across the ocean in the Americas, looking for work, housing, health and friendships with which to share and confront the immense pain.

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