Diary of a "baby bottle"

This Tuesday, the book War Diary of a 'Baby' by the Badalona poet Josep Gual, who died in 2005, will be presented at the Museu de Badalona. Another Badalona poet, the philologist Valentí Soler, has taken care of the transcription of the manuscript of the notebook that Gual wrote from April 28, 1938, when he joined the conscription called up at the athletics tracks in Carrer Iris, until he was sentenced to forced labor in September of the same year. The book has been published by Edicions del Pont del Petroli, which already has several poetry collections by Josep Gual in its catalog.

The memory of the poet Josep Gual is very present in the city of Badalona. To give three examples: the bookstore Mitja Mosca, which owes its name to Gual's verses that say: “Like a handful of fish / I offer you my verses, / be careful, don't let them pass / into your hands, for they are caught / with a half-fly hook”; the same verses can be read, written on the ground of the Rambla, the city's most beloved place, in the so-called Racó d’en Gual; and the poet is also remembered for his connection to Club Joventut, of which he was a player during the 1930s and author of the club's first anthem.

Josep Gual's work is marked by his experience in the war and the subsequent repression and, in fact, cannot be separated from his life, dominated by a commitment to democracy, the labor movement, and left-wing Catalanism.

Now we will have the opportunity to understand firsthand the impact that the war front had on a seventeen-year-old boy. This 128-page handwritten diary is published at a time when young people from various parts of the world are still experiencing or will soon experience this ordeal.

Thursday, April 28, 1938: Badalona Velodrome. At eight in the morning there is great animation around the Velodrome. About eight hundred boys from the 411 draft are waiting to be transferred to Barcelona to report to the Recruitment Office. At seven in the morning I said goodbye to my parents and siblings. My father accompanied me to my grandmother's house, from whom I said goodbye and felt something in my throat that I could hardly speak. The poor woman shed a few tears while kissing me. I braced myself so that I wouldn't shed tears myself and headed to the meeting point. Almost all the faces are familiar to me: my schoolmates, those from the Penya... I immediately went to a group where Ribó, Garriga, Antúnez and others were. At nine o'clock, a large influx of women is already noticeable. Who among all of us doesn't have an idyll started at seventeen years old!!!Sunday, May 29, 1938: Santander. I feel like I have gone back a few years in my life. We learn that precisely today a Hispano-Italian fraternity event is being celebrated in Santander. Falangist youth, trained and armed, pass by us with determined steps. They are all clean and neat, contrasting with us who walk with uncertain steps, crushed, dirty. The victors and the vanquished. They look at us with an air of manifest superiority and when they pass by us they shout "Long live Spain!", which we immediately answer by looking at what may come.