The memories of one of the last Catalan exiles of the Civil War

SabadellThe first memory that Isabel Sarrà y Carbonell (Sabadell, 1935) has is a grey painted boat. It was the SS Massilia, which left the French port of La Rochelle on October 19, 1939, with a host of Spanish Republican refugees fleeing the war. They had already escaped Franco, and now it was their turn to flee Hitler. It was a journey on which a German submarine pursued them. Isabel remembers the trip sipping a Vichy in the elegant cafeteria of the Hotel Urpí in Sabadell, where she stays whenever she can return to her hometown. After decades living in Chile, in recent years she has been returning to Catalonia. She is one of the last Catalan exiles from the Civil War.

Isabel has never stopped speaking Catalan. Some of her descendants have stopped speaking the language in Chile, and others still speak it fluently. "I speak Catalan to all my nephews and nieces, and they understand me. But since they've married Chilean men and women, it's been lost," she says. A few months ago, she participated in a meeting of descendants of Sabadell Republicans, and when she saw that some of them didn't speak Catalan well because they had stopped speaking to her, she wrinkled her nose. "At home, Catalan sentiment was very important," says the daughter of Salvador Sarrà y Serravinyals (Sabadell, 1902 - Santiago de Chile, 1965), politician, businessman, soccer player, and writer. Sarrà was a very active man: he was also an ERC activist, Sabadell's Councilor for Culture, and founder of the local hiking center. One of his great causes was promoting education and reading among the poor, fostering reading clubs and schools. During the Civil War, he held positions in the Generalitat (Catalan government) before going into exile, crossing the border on foot with his wife, Emilia Carbonell, and their four children: Claudi, Salvador, Isabel, and Arnau. Salvador was interned in the Argelès camp, but thanks to the help of Francesc and Eduard Graells, residents of Sabadell, who had been living in Masamet for some time, he was able to leave. Sarrà returned to Argelès because his friend Josep Esteve was still there. He had promised not to leave him alone, and together they escaped over the barbed wire, also with the help of the Graells family. Sarrà was able to reunite with his family. He lived first in Orleans and then in Chartres. There she met Jean Moulin, arguably the greatest hero of the French Resistance, murdered by the Nazis in 1943. "They met, and he always said that Moulin had helped us a lot," says Isabel, who has preserved letters in which her father speaks of that man of action who sympathized with the Spanish Republican cause. Isabel remembers nothing of these events; she was too young. But she does remember her father's pride when he said he had met Moulin, one of the great French heroes.

For a few months, the Sarràs thought they could stay in France, but when Hitler attacked, it was time to flee again. Luckily, they managed to find passage aboard the SS Massilia, a ship that operated the Bordeaux-Buenos Aires route. That would be the ship's last voyage, as shortly afterward it was used as a hospital ship by the Nazis. "The ship was full of Catalans and Republican politicians. I remember there was a man named Coromines," says Isabel, likely referring to the philologist Joan Coromines i Vigneaux (Barcelona, ​​1905-1997), who spent many years in exile in Argentina. "The adults talked about the war, about what they had experienced. It was what had left its mark on them. They always talked about the day they could return; many believed that one day it would all end," recalls this woman, who was then a four-year-old girl who, whenever she could, ran around the ship's deck, fascinated by what she saw.

Once in Buenos Aires, the Sarràs crossed the Andes to Chile by taking the Transandino train, a train that stopped operating in 1984. "In Santiago, I didn't know anyone, although I knew other Catalans had been there. I thought I could find work with my training. And so it was. I never got a job, I didn't find work very quickly." I found my first job in a peculiar way. "We didn't have relatives in Chile. But luckily there was a very well-organized Catalan Center. And whenever a group of refugees arrived at the Mapocho train station, they sent someone to ask out loud if there were Catalans. When we arrived, we heard it and we stayed for days in a hotel. They took us to a hotel. The Center Català will pay for it. When the pare goes trobar feina més endavant, va voler tornar The diners of those nights at the hotel were going to find a house on Independència street in Santiago, near the cementiri; with the Givi, some suitcase manufacturers. Later, he found work at an Argentine spinning company and finally, in the wine sector. He met some vineyards that had wineries but wanted to create a company to export wine, and my father joined the project. He became the manager and partner. Curiously, at home, he didn't like wine. He drank a little on Sundays and a lot," he says. El Salvador was one of the founders of the company Exportadora de Vinos, Convic. Ltda. Vineyards and wineries, which made her think of those Vallesan barracks that Pere Quart had included in his poems. Because many Catalans ended up in Santiago de Chile, including many members of the Colla de Sabadell, such as the poet Joan Oliver (Pere Quart) and the writer Francesc Trabal. "They all joined the Catalan Centre, which had existed for decades. Talks were held, Floral Games... everything was in Catalan. It was a blessing to find those people," says Isabel, saddened when she remembers that the Catalan Centre in Santiago no longer exists.

"Thanks to wine, he found a good job. At that time, in Chile there were families of Basque origin with a lot of land and wineries, families who were also important in the political sphere, like Ochagavia and Zañartu." But there were also Catalans who had arrived at the beginning of the 20th century and had bought land and vineyards. "And they were key in improving the wines and, especially, in exporting them. They hired my father because they saw he was a sensible man. They were already veterans; my father looked young next to them," recalls Isabel, who tries to recall those Catalans. "Ollé, Martí, Mir...", she continues. As the years passed, the Sarràs understood that Franco would not fall and that they would not be able to return to Catalonia. "When the news of Lluís Companys's execution arrived, my father was very sad. They had joined the ERC together and were friends," she explains.

"Their father received offers for political office, but he no longer wanted to have anything to do with politics," Isabel adds. He only agreed to be a representative on Chile's official export agencies, where he traveled to many countries to open new markets, taking advantage of the quality of Chilean vineyards, which had not suffered from phylloxera. By then, he had realized he would not return to Catalonia. It was time to make a life for himself in Chile, where his children would make their mark. The eldest son, Salvador, became an important doctor and was a pioneer in geriatrics and gerontology in Chile, where he died in 2023. Arnau continued in the wine industry, like his father. And the third brother, Claudi, worked in the same suitcase factory where his father had found his first job, although he later left for an industrial clothing company in the city of Talca. Her son, Claudi Sarrà Loyola, known to everyone as Claudiet, eventually came to live in Catalonia, in Sant Cugat del Vallès, where he has become Isabel's best guide whenever she returns. "I've been able to see all of Catalonia, places like Tarragona with those ruins," Isabel says. And what did Isabel do with her life? "My father didn't want me to work. But once he died in 1965, I studied decoration. And so I was able to return to Sabadell for the first time, because I came to study at the Autonomous University of Sabadell in 1967. My father wouldn't have let me return with Franco in power, but I wanted to study. Later, I worked at a very important furniture company, Agua Agua Ltda."., Founded by an important Catalan family, that of Barcelona's first Republican mayor, Jaume Aiguader i Miró. Isabel worked as a secretary under the Aguadés and was able to design furniture before retiring. Isabel, by the way, doesn't like wine very much either.

In recent years, she has been returning to Catalonia to deliver a large part of her father's documentation to the Sabadell Historical Archive. Accompanied by Claudiet and other relatives, they rented a car to retrace the route she took in 1939, along the border, passing by the Exile Memorial Museum. They also wanted to go to France, where they visited the museum dedicated to Jean Moulin in Chartres. "Every time I return, I get more emotional," says a woman who was able to participate in a meeting organized by the Sabadell Historical Archive and History Museum last October with relatives of other Sabadell residents who were exiled, such as Josep Rosas Vilaseca, a member of the PSUC (United Socialist Workers' Union) and the UGT (United Workers' Union), who crossed the border. Rosas' descendants also often return to Barcelona, ​​where some great-grandchildren live in Poble-sec. Isabel shared memories with Pepita Sobré Aragay and Montserrat Graells Sobré, niece and nephew of Amadeu Aragay Daví, the politician and writer who was the ideologist and secretary of the Union of Rabassaires of Catalonia, as well as a prominent footballer for CE Sabadell. "They never stopped thinking about Catalonia," they said about Sarrà, who died in Chile, and Aragay, who died in Mexico. At the event, Isabel took a photo with Silvia Oliver Serra. That is, the daughter of the poet Pere Quart, who came with the Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat (Generalitat Railways) from Barcelona, ​​​​making it clear: "I have never lived in Sabadell, but it feels like my home." Silvia, with a biting humor inherited from her father, told Isabel how her father, already in Barcelona, ​​​​would play Chilean music on a record player, such as Cueca, whom he had met in exile.

"It was a generation marked by defeat and tragedy. But brilliant, hard-working people who found a new home, without forgetting their roots," explains Claudi Sarrà Loyola, who always looks out for Isabel when she's in Catalonia. The family still knows her as the little girl, as she was the only daughter of El Salvador. A girl turned into an elegant lady who decided that at 89 she would cross the sea by plane alone. She has been able to return to Catalonia. Her father has not. "He never wore a tie, he always wore a bow tie, like the Republicans did. He always talked about Catalonia, but he could never return," says the daughter of a man who was part of the Catalan Center and the Catalan Patriotic Group of Chile, and who was one of the founders of the publishing house El Pi de les Tres Branques, along with El Pi de les Tres Branques. "The closest he came to Catalonia was when he went to Alghero in 1961. That year, his book Song to the working-class city, in which he explains what his ideal Sabadell would be like, won an award for the Floral Games held in the Catalan-speaking Italian city. A year later, El Salvador would be responsible for organizing a new edition of the awards in Chile, when he met the great actress Margarida Xirgu i Subirà.

Salvador Sarrà was buried in the Mutual Catalana pantheon in the General Cemetery of Santiago, with a tombstone with a Catalan flag where even today you can read "Biel asleep forever, rests in peace and freedom, awaiting the return to his native civil home", a piece of his Song to the working-class cityIsabel occasionally strolls through the cemetery. She'd like to tell him that people still call Sabadell to talk about him. "It moves me greatly that someone like him isn't forgotten," she concludes.