Javier Ferreiro

Manuel Ferreiro Fernández and Aurora Gutierrez, who we see in this photograph taken on their wedding day, had five children: Jose Ignacio, Manuel, Rafael, Luz María and me, Javier, the author of this summary of my father’s life. When the military coup of 1936 took place, he was 24 and combined his job in the family grocery store in Ribadesella (Asturias) with his role in creating the local branch of the Communist Party.

His position allowed him to save a number of friends from attack, and even from death, since he did not believe that because they were political rivals, they deserved unjustified and illegal vengeance. He fought on the Asturias front, and when it fell and the fascist troops advanced on his hometown, he fled into the hills with his brother Juan while his parents and sister remained in Ribadesella. 

After a few months, his family agreed to take advantage of a hole in the bathroom adjoining the staircase of the building to create a hiding place in their house. He remained there for more than a year, coming out occasionally to walk around the house. On one such occasion, a German couple arrived to occupy a bedroom and he did not have time to return to his hiding place. He hid underneath the bed and, scared to death, listened to the soldier and his girlfriend unpack their bags and get dressed until they went out and he could hide again.

The Civil Guard looked hard for him and periodically went to the house and arrested his father. His sister Maruja took the police to the hills and called out: “Come down Manolitoooo! Nothing will happen to you.” As the situation dragged on, he used his younger brother Juan, who was not wanted by the authorities, as a go-between with some of his Nationalist friends to arrange for him to flee the country, but one of them informed and the Civil Guard arrested him in his hiding place.

At his trial, the prosecutor demanded the death penalty, but thanks to the intervention of the many friends on the winning side who he had saved during the war, he was sent to the concentration camp in Miranda del Ebro.

After his release from prison, Manuel returned to Ribadesella and began his life again, marrying our mother in 1944. He had first met her when, hidden in his cubbyhole next to the stairs, she and her father had arrived from Mazcuerras to rent the apartment above Manuel’s. In silence and darkness, he decided that one day that girl would be the mother of his children, and so she was. From the two of them we inherited important social values: justice, democracy, education, and respect for differences of opinion that should always be resolved through dialogue and never through violence.

Manuel died in 2006 in the city of A Coruña, where he had lived since 1964.