Josefa searches social networks for testimonies that give her clues as to where Trinidad Pérez is, who would now be 80 years old
“My name is Josefa Villanueva.. I was born in Picassent (Valencia), but when I was 4 years old they took me to France, which is where I live. I’m looking for my mother. I haven’t heard from her since 1971 when I was 4 years old.. His name is Trinidad Pérez Mejías and the address that he lived was calle Pio XII number 32. Now he is 80 years old. I ask you to ask her eldest if they got to know her and knew how to give me clues as to where she might be. Thank you & rdquor ;.
This is the message that Josefa, next to the only photo he has of his mother when she married his father in 1961, Has published in a Picassent Facebook group in search of a clue that would lead him to his mother. She thinks she’s alive, at leasts no death certificate found nor any other clue that tells him otherwise, and that he has searched for it. This summer did not hesitate to come to Picassent for a few days with her partner to see if she could find something.
“I went to the Torrent parish where I know my parents got married in April 1942 because I have the marriage certificate and they couldn’t tell me anything. In Picassent I also asked the neighbors of the neighborhoodto the town hall, with the help of a neighbor, but we couldn’t find any document about my mother either & rdquor ;, explains Josefa, somewhat despondent from France. “My sister has already thrown in the towel but I still have some hope when I’m going to find her & rdquor ;, he confesses.
And it is that Josefa wants to ask her mother why she did not go with her sister and her father to France. According to Montauban in France, her parents, her older sister Trinidad and she lived in Picassent at number 32 Pio XII Street. Her father, Gabriel Villanueva, went to work in France and her mother stayed in Picassent with them in house of his father’s sister. Seeing that she already had a stable job in France, the father returned to Picassent for the three, but he does not know why, he only took his two daughters and not his mother.
“I don’t know why he didn’t come to France. My father doesn’t want to tell me anything. When I ask him about her he gets angry and states that he doesn’t want to hear her name or hers & rdquor ;. In fact her father remarried in France and Josefa found out that this woman was not her biological mother by chance. “I was about 13 years old and I argued with the children of a neighbor who had known us all our lives and to tease me she told me that she didn’t even know my real mother. I told my sister Trinidad and we ran to ask my father, who only told us that he did not want to know anything about her, confirming that it was true & rdquor ;, he recalls.
I discovered at the age of 13 that I was not the daughter of my father’s wife when I quarreled with the children of a neighbor and they told me that I did not even know my real mother “
Josefa keeps her mother’s photo like gold on cloth, along with her birth certificate where the full name of her mother and her date of birth appear, as well as the marriage certificate. They are the only documents that she has been able to find.r. “I found the photo among the things my aunt kept, my father’s sister, when he died & rdquor ;, he explains.
Her aunt didn’t tell her anything about her mother either. She knows that she has four cousins who live between Picassent and Valencia, “but I have no relationship with them and I don’t know exactly where they are & rdquor ;. To the neighbors who live in the area where she lived as a child and who are the age her mother would be now, about 80 years old, “I also asked them when I went to Picassent this summer. Most of them did not know her and there was one who told me that if my family had not told me anything, neither did they.
But it is precisely this mystery that makes Josefa not give up the search. “I want to know what happened. If she is alive I want to know if she wants to meet me and that I explained why she left us with my father and we haven’t heard from her since. I still hope that that day will come & rdquor ;, he says.