The silenced memory of the Civil War takes center stage

Castellón de EmpúriesFigueres was dubbed the Catalan Guernica because of the high number of deaths caused by fascist bombings during the Spanish Civil War. In the midst of one of the deadliest bombing raids, in Plaça del Gra, a nurse found little Elena crying desperately among the mutilated bodies and rubble. The girl threw herself into the nurse's arms as bombs continued to rain down on the civilian population. Elena was located years later in the French town of Fumel, where the nurse had taken her in, believing she had been orphaned. The little girl was able to return to her parents, but she could never forget the noise of the planes and bombs over the city, nor, of course, the nurse who had saved her and cared for her like a daughter. Like a nightmare, the drone of the aircraft was also forever etched in the memories of the protagonists of the six stories told in the play. Noise of airplanesWritten by Manel Puig, directed by Àngels Barrientos and Maria Rosa Oliveres, and performed by actors from two amateur theater companies, the play, consisting of six monologues—one for each of the six stories told—has been a great success in Castelló d'Empúries and Llançà, where every performance has sold out. It begins a tour of several towns in the Empordà region this January. According to Manel Puig, the play's success stems from the fact that "instead of focusing on the war at the front, soldiers against soldiers, it deals with the suffering of civilians on the home front," based on the experiences of six real people. Puig also maintains that presenting these experiences of the Spanish Civil War through theater allows "historical memory to reach the public more easily, especially young people."

To write the six monologues, Puig, a scholar of the history of the Civil War in his hometown of Castelló d'Empúries, relied on documentation found in archives but, above all, on interviews with relatives of the play's protagonists. He believes these people should emerge from anonymity, since their experiences during the Civil War provide very significant testimony.

Puig wrote Noise of airplanes after the success of one of his previous plays, What we have left behindwhere he recounted the experiences of residents of Castelló d'Empúries during the Civil War. Noise of airplanes He has expanded the territorial scope of the action to six towns in the Alt Empordà, where he has investigated six lives that for him deserve to be known: the teacher Josep Simón from Sant Pere Pescador; the Italian spy from Roses, Luigi Morini; the librarian Justa Balló from Llançà; the lost girl from Figueres; the airplane pilot Josep Falcó from Garriguella, and the barber Antoni Pujol from Castelló d'Empúries.

The barber who was shot and the last letter he sent to his wife

The barber Antoni Pujol was one of the four men from Castellón who were executed by firing squad against the walls of the Girona cemetery. The play recounts his arrest and his wife's outrage upon receiving his letter of pardon after he had already been shot. The play also tells the story of another letter, the last one his wife received while he was detained and awaiting a summary trial, in which he told her he was innocent and not to suffer. "My grandmother never parted with that letter again. Every night before going to sleep, she would unfold it, read it, and place it under her pillow. The next day, she would put it under her bra, next to her heart, and she did this every day for more than 40 years," says Pujol. The family keeps the letter, worn and patched with tape, as if it were a treasure. That his grandfather's life is no longer anonymous thanks to Manel Puig's work is, for Josep Pujol, "a recognition of a person, the village barber, who served everyone in his barbershop, regardless of which side they were on, who always lived without harming anyone, and who was unjustly executed." "Someone has said that remembering these war stories is reopening old wounds, but for me it is precisely about closing wounds that are still open," concludes the grandson of the barber Antoni Pujol.

The teacher of Sant Pere Pescador

In 1932, Josep Simón won the teaching position in Sant Pere Pescador. He was a teacher committed to the Republic and its educational reforms. "Education was going to be equal for boys and girls, free and secular, more practical and less focused on rote memorization. The student was the center, not the teacher, and above all: the teaching of our language, Catalan," the play recounts. "Once the war ended, everything changed. Corrective measures were applied, and the equality of knowledge between men and women was shattered." Teacher Simón had to go into exile in France, and years later he surrendered to the Francoist authorities and was imprisoned. He was released in 1945, but was not allowed to teach again until 1963, when he began working at the school in Les Preses, where he remained until his retirement, according to his grandson, Jordi Lara. Lara appreciates that the experiences of anonymous people during the Civil War, like her grandfather's, are being brought to light through theater, since "they resonate more with people." "These are difficult stories that have often remained unknown because the next generation, my parents' generation, didn't want to know anything about them because they were too close to home and caused too much pain," Lara says. "Among our generation, the grandchildren, and also the great-grandchildren, historical memory is increasingly sparking interest," she adds.

A spy disguised as a woman

Among the lives, exploits, and memories that official history had forgotten is also the story of Luigi Morini, an Italian spy who recalls how, during a carnival in Roses, he decided to disguise himself as a woman to avoid detection. With the help of his assistant, Tantas, he transmitted information to the Francoist side: the locations of anti-aircraft batteries, cannons, and the entire coastal defense. The monologue explains how Morini managed to deliver this information undetected, first in Barcelona and then in Roses, revealing the tension and ingenuity of a war rife with betrayals and deceptions.

The Bookmobile of the Joust

Justa, born in Llançà, left for Barcelona at a young age to study at an American boarding school and later trained as a teacher and librarian. She worked in the Figueres library, first as a substitute and then as director, and thanks to grants from the Generalitat (the Catalan government) she learned how country libraries operated in England. This experience allowed her to organize the mobile library at the front lines, which brought books to soldiers and hospital patients, including those at the General Hospital of Catalonia, where she met a man wounded in the bombing of Barcelona. The monologue highlights humanity and culture as weapons of resistance in times of war.

An airfield in Garriguella

Josep Falcó, a lieutenant and fighter pilot in the Republican Air Force, was the protagonist of the last aerial combat of the war. Flying a Russian-made aircraft, less advanced than the German fighters, he managed to shoot down two enemy planes at the Garriguella airfield. The monologue describes this final battle and the pilot's journey into exile, culminating with a mention of the German-inscribed gravestone commemorating the pilot Falcó shot down, still visible today in the Garriguella cemetery.

Through these episodes, different in context and protagonists, a collective narrative is formed that shows how theater can be a successful tool for preserving and disseminating historical memory.