“Has the dream stayed in prison?”

Unpublished writings of the historic PSOE activist Ángeles Flórez, who turns 105 this Friday, with her brothers Secundino, Argentina and Aurora show the sufferings of a family whose members were deprived of their freedom after the Civil War

In August 1941 the militia Ángeles Flórez Peón, known as Maricuela, regained her freedom after having spent four years in Franco’s prison of women from Saturrarán (Guipúzcoa). It was then when this historic militant of the PSOE He undertook a train trip back to Tuilla-Tiuya (Langreo-Llangréu), the Asturian town where his mother lived, Restores PeonAnd his brother Secundinoa militiaman who was captured in Gijón on October 20, 1937 after the fall of the Asturian front. When He was deprived of liberty in concentration camps and workers’ battalions until August 1940.

The feelings that flooded the head of Ángeles during that train trip along the Cantabrian coast to the house in Tuilla where his mother lived, but also Secundino’s sufferings are now coming to light thanks to the letters discovered in the family archive. In these letters Maricuela and Secundino relate their joys and sufferings to their mother and their sisters Aurora and Argentina. The latter had also been imprisoned in the Saturrarán prison, after which she settled in Baracaldo (Vizcaya) since she was banished outside of Asturias by a Franco court.

“Dearest and not for a moment forgotten sister. I have so much to tell you. Where do I start? Like this? To tell you that I had a pretty good time on the train and was distracted talking to the travelers, eh!”, he begins in his letter ‘ Maricuela’, which tells Argentina about its railway trip between Guipúzcoa and Asturias. In it she highlights that When the train arrived in Pola de Siero she began to get “nervous about getting to know the places in our land.”

“First emotion”

And “in La Pola”, Ángeles Flórez’s story continues, had a “first emotion”, because it coincided with the dam “Juanita Polo, from Oviedo.” And then he saw “Remedios la del Col”, although he couldn’t talk to her “because of the speed of the train.”

“In El Berrón I met Pepina, [y] go through your imagination the scene of joy that we have had,” he tells Argentina. Back on the train, Ángeles greeted “Edelmira de Sotrondio and her sister; and another from Saturrarán.” In Carbayín she saw “Pepe”, who settled in her wagon. “A few prisoners” who had regained their freedom gathered there, so everything seemed like a “lie” to him. And for these reunions Maricuela She assures that she is done getting “nervous.”

When she arrived in Tuilla at the station there was no one waiting for her, she explains, because her brother, who always looked at the train in case one of his sisters appeared, had not received the telegram with the notice in time. “When the train arrived and they saw me unloading the packages, Secundino jumped up next to me, there was no one to separate us,” writes Ángeles, who continues the story written to her sister Argentina: “But It was more exciting when mother arrived; She cried a lot and there was no one to separate her.. I vice versa when I hugged you; I didn’t cry at all. The people on the train and others around here were crying out of sadness.“.

“Until five in the morning”

Many neighbors came to visit her and congratulate her for having regained her freedom. “At night When He went to bed first because of work, but a guy has been talking to us until two in the morning; and then mother and I until five; I went to bed and got up at half past six; Since I have left it seems that the dream does not want to be with me, has it stayed in the ‘Prison’“?” he continues Maricuela.

Ángeles Flórez also informs her sister that after “He went to the post here” to explain “the case to the Civil Guard corporal. He called the Carbayín officer and everything was settled.” tailored to my desires and yours, right sister? If I have to go somewhere, I have to ask for permission,” highlights Ángeles Flórez, who turns 105 this Friday, November 17.

Prior to the letter addressed to his sister Argentina, Maricuela He had already announced to Secundino, also by letter, that his sentence had been reduced: “After having suffered great disappointment” because his file did not arrive, because he believed that he had been kept for “the 15 years” of his first sentence, it arrived “at 9 years old”. And this meant that he would be free under a decree that allowed militiamen with sentences of less than 12 years to be released, although as in the case of his sister Argentina they could be banished from their provinces of origin.

Secundino, “at home” in 1940

One year before Maricuela After he was free, on August 9, 1940, Secundino had written another letter to his sisters in which he informed them that he had been “at home” for two days. At that moment When It definitively removed a suffering that is reflected in another letter, in which Ángeles said, verbatim: “I notice that you are very sad; do not be sad Secundino, our sufferings are coming to an end. […] I repeat to you again that Don’t be sad, think that the day is very close when we will all get together at home, and then you will see how happy we are going to be; We will try to forget the past (although there are things that cannot be forgotten); and then the four of us will work to sweeten the life of our dear mother. Don’t you think?”

Secundino was released three years after he was imprisoned on October 21, 1937 in the Francoist concentration camp of Cudillero (Asturias). In December 1937 he was transferred to the Candás camp (Asturias); on February 21, 1938 to Corbán (Cantabria) and finally on March 31, 1938 to Aranda de Duero (Burgos).

In Los Barrios (Cádiz)

In this last town in Burgos he was assigned to the 34th Workers’ Battalion of the Third Company until it was dissolved on December 9, 1939, the date on which he was assigned to the Workers’ Battalion number 6. Among other forced labors, he was displaced in February 1940 to Los Barrios (Cádiz). Died in 1993, Secundino always explained to his daughter, Ángeles Flórez Muñiz, and his three grandchildren that he had been forced to “dig trenches.” in front of the Rock of Gibraltar.

He remained in Battalion number 6 until July 18, 1940, the day he was sent to Oviedo prison, from which he was released in August 1940. A year later he was able to hug his little sister, who, at the age of 18, and after enlisting and becoming a nurse at the field hospital in the Gijón neighborhood of La Calzada, she was arrested. She was imprisoned until she was 22 years old, when she wrote the unpublished letter recently found in the archive of the family members who, in 1934, had already experienced another drama: the violent death after the October Revolution of 1934 of Antonio, the older brother, one of those known as the martyrs of Carbayín. This Friday, 82 years after writing them, Maricuela will be able to read again the letters he sent to his “brothers” Argentina and Secundino.