Paco Monsonís and his wife Pili live in Paris, but now that they are retired they spend long periods of time in Artana (the Plana Baixa), which is the town of her family. They both met in the French capital, children of Valencian emigrants who arrived after the war. Paco's family was from Burriana, and they emigrated because his father, who was an anarchist cabinetmaker, thought that by taking advantage of the status of republican refugee in France things would go better for them, as they did. Paco went to university and joined the Communist Party. This couple of young idealists turned their house into one of the safe houses that the party made available to Spanish exiles. Many Catalans also passed through there, like Quico Pi de la Serra. "One day we came back from a few days' holiday and found the whole house occupied by a theatre company," he once told me, laughing.