“Do you miss your grandparents? The question remained unanswered on a rainy morning in Cádiz. It was made by Ignacio, 11 years old. The orange alert led to the closure of his school and his mother took him and his brother to the first meeting on historical memory organized by the Provincial Deputation of Cádiz. Three women had been talking for an hour about their grandparents, and when the audience’s question time began, he dared to raise his hand. “Do you miss your grandparents?” » she asked, faced with the surprised look of her interlocutors. Two of them, Lola and Gloria, never knew their grandfather. He was executed after the Civil War. The other, Loreto, was able to meet him. He doesn’t miss it. It was her grandfather who helped arrest and kill Lola and Gloria’s grandfather.
The journalist David Doña, organizer of this meeting, managed to bring together the granddaughters of a retaliator, Manuel Muñoz Martínez, and his repressor, Pedro Urraca. “It was almost a coincidence. We presented a documentary made by the Provincial Delegation on Muñoz Martínez, and immediately after, another on Pedro Urraca was shown. We realized that the two stories were connected and thought it would be interesting to facilitate a meeting between their granddaughters. And the place of this meeting was Cadiz.
“She would have felt repaired”
One day in 2008, Loreto Urraca was reading the newspaper and was surprised to see her last name in a report. They spoke of a Franco policeman who was dedicated to the persecution, harassment and detention of exiles from Republican Spain in France. His name was Pedro Urraca. It was his grandfather. He then learned that in coordination with the Nazi Gestapo, he participated in the arrest of the former president of the Catalan Generalitat Luis Companys, the former minister Julián Zugazagoitia and even a deputy from Chiclana named Manuel Muñoz Martínez . Esteban Muñoz, Gloria and Lola’s grandfather.
Unlike Loreto, the two sisters knew the story of their grandfather from their childhood, thanks to the torn and painful testimony of their mother. “My grandfather was an impeccable, decorated soldier, an intelligent, socially conscious and republican man,” remembers his granddaughter Lola. Muñoz Martínez became an elected deputy for the province of Cádiz during the Second Republic and became one of Manuel Azaña’s trusted men. After the coup, he managed to flee to France, but Urraca’s incitement work could have been fundamental to his location, extradition, imprisonment in Spain and, ultimately, execution. “My mother was in the cell the day before the execution,” Gloria remembers.
Their mother, Manuel’s daughter, was another victim of this repression. A reformed schoolgirl, cast aside and with the tragedy of losing her father in this way. He never forgot all of this. And that’s how she passed it on to her daughters. “My mother had no resentment. I was very hurt, yes. But never any resentment. She never wanted the same thing to happen to those on the other side that happened to her,” Lola said with emotion. During this meeting, both of them only had their voices broken twice. The two times they remembered their mother and how important this meeting would have been to her. “She would have felt repaired. Of course”.
“This meeting should be repeated in institutes”
Being able to speak with the families of her grandfather’s victims was also healing for Loreto Urraca. After finding out everything Pedro Urraca had done, she felt implicated in his crimes. “I was gutted, I was ashamed.” This is why, in 2013, he opened a website, www.pedrourraca.info, to transmit reports and lists of persecuted republicans. He also wrote a novel, “Among the Hyenas”; He participated in a documentary on the relatives of the victims of the genocide and is part of the collective “Historias disobedientes”, a movement born in Argentina.
“Being here with them, with Gloria and Lola, is curative and restorative,” said Loreto Urraca during this meeting organized by the Provincial Delegation of Cádiz, who also reflected on the difficulties of digging graves or on the role of the education in democratic memory. “This meeting should be repeated in institutes,” suggested historian Santiago Moreno at the end of the day.
And this story of grandparents is what made one child, 11-year-old Ignacio, raise his hand and ask this question. “Do you miss your grandparents? The question left Lola confused. “I didn’t get to meet him,” he decided to say. But his sister Gloria took over. “Of course we miss him. Because if I had, I would have asked him a thousand questions. I would love to talk to him.
Ignacio then looked at Loreto, who, moved, had to remember a painful moment again. “My grandfather was blind and one day he told me he was going to dictate his memoirs to me. At the time, I didn’t know what he had done, but I told him no, because I wasn’t interested in what a civil servant of his era had done. Now that I know everything he did, I’m glad I said no,” he explained. He doesn’t miss his grandfather or miss him. Telling him he doesn’t did not spare a story that would have hurt him more today.
After Ignacio’s question, Ana Julia Muñoz, daughter of Gloria, niece of Lola, great-granddaughter of Manuel, spoke among the audience. “I’m proud of all three of you. “I know what you’ve been through and I know how important this day is to you.” These words closed an act sealed with a hug. A hug from three granddaughters.
