Empty Places/Sitios Vacíos
¿Que están los sitios vacíos? Cuanto lo siento, mis hijos.
In May 1938, my grandparents, Esther and Enrique said goodbye to their family and friends and left Barcelona with their two year old son on HMS Hostile, a British Navy destroyer taking civil war refugees to Marseilles.
Their journey continued via Paris to England where neither of them spoke the language.
The UK government had a policy of non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War; refugees and exiles were not readily received but my grandfather had British nationality as his own grandfather was English.
He was based in Aragon as an engineer in the Republican Army when the British Consulate advised him to leave Spain.
Months after their arrival in England my mother was born in Stepney and there were to be several changes of address over the next few years from Ilford to Swindon (where they were bombed out), and back to Essex.
The Civil War ended in April 1939 and they applied to return home, but before they were able to do so two things happened.
In August 1939, with the help of the Red Cross and with my grandparents agreeing to act as guarantors, my grandmother’s two older brothers were found in French concentration camps and were permitted to come and join the family in the UK.
Matias, the eldest of the six siblings was military by profession and in the Guardia de Asalto (Republican urban police units) and Alfredo, a Doctor and surgeon with the Republican Army.
Then came the outbreak of World War Two in September, making the return to Spain impossible.
My grandparents stayed in England until 1947 when they finally made the journey home to their flat in Calle Aribau in the Eixample area of Barcelona, now with their four children.
Life in post-war Spain was extremely difficult and seeing my grandfather juggling three jobs, my grandmother suggested that perhaps they should return to England, which they did in 1951, settling in Ealing, West London.
Remaining in England, Alfredo was reunited with his wife and daughter after nine years apart.
A son was born in England in 1948 and eventually they would all make their home in South America when their daughter married a Venezuelan naval officer. Alfredo never returned to Spain.
Matías lived in England for the rest of his life. He visited his brothers in Spain some time in the mid- seventies, but he never saw his wife, son and daughters again.
Each Christmas from 1939 my great-grandfather, Matías Cuello Pardinilla, wrote a toast in poetry form to his absent children, and later grandchildren.
Como bien recordareis, es formulé,
y no me pesa, un paternal promesa:
reservaros a los seis un asiento en esta mesa.
Mi palabra está cumplida,
incluso para los ‘crios”
¿que estan los sitios vacíos?
es verdad, y ¡por mi vida!
¡Cuanto los siento, hijos mios!
Porque yo ¿qué mas quisiera
que fiesta tan familiar
la pudiéramos pasar sin una sombra
siquiera de tristeza en el hogar
As you well remember, I made,
in writing, a fatherly vow
that never weighs me down:
to reserve for the six of you
a seat at this table.
I keep my word,
and include the ‘kids’.
It’s true there are empty places
and how truly sorry I am, my children!
For, what more do I wish
Than to celebrate this family festival
Without so much as a shadow
of sadness in our home?
A verse from ‘Brindis Navideño – a mis hijos ausentes’
‘Christmas Toast – to my absent children’
Matías Cuello Pardinilla, Barcelona 1939
Matías died in 1944 without seeing his exiled children again.
‘Empty Places/Sitios Vacíos’ is an historical memory project which attempts to understand the untold stories of how our family was affected by the Spanish Civil War.
It is a subject that my grandmother – who shared many stories with me – just didn’t want to talk about.
Since beginning work on this theme I’ve had the opportunity to get to know one of my Venezuelan cousins, Alfredo’s youngest grandson, who to my surprise and delight had made a film about his grandfather’s early experiences at the same time that I was starting to make paintings about my grandmother’s life in the 1930s.
In the last couple of years the family in Venezuela have found themselves exiles in other countries yet again and four generations have been separated, now living in Spain, Chile and the UK.
I have also made contact for the first time with some of Matías’s grand-daughters in Spain who grew up with a different and painful version of events.
It is about the scattering of a family because of war and the hope that one day the descendants of great-grandfather Matías’s exiled children will meet around a dining-table to celebrate our shared heritage.
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