“Oh, what a disappointmentif the wind erased mewhat I sing “… The chords of “red rooster, black rooster” managed to draw out the angry voice of those who recognized that until now the “Curva de Magaz” was a place of silence and oblivion for the mass grave of 33 men and 2 women.
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The singer-songwriter Isabel Revilla del Río (Isamil9) and the writer Sol Gómez Arteaga, gave voice to this act full of moments of emotion among the relatives of the 35 outings who gathered in this tribute organized by the representatives of Podemos, Olegario Vega and Lorena González, and who has had the support of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, the historian Santiago Macías, and the mayors of Camponaraya and Ponferrada.
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85 years later, Rosa, granddaughter of the reprisal Mariano Fernández Fernández, took from a paper the memory of someone who keeps in the memory of her mother as“a loving father, a good life partner of his grandmother and a friend dear to his friends … a carpenter who left four children in September of 36 ..”
Appealing to justice and banishing resentment, from the ARMH, Sol Gómez Artiaga, granddaughter and great-granddaughter of reprisals, described as “necessary” this act that, he said, “allows to meet the historical debt that continues to be owed to these people and by extension to the thousands of Republican men and women who were massacred for defending: peace , bread, democracy, freedom, equality, better social conditions … not only because they were humble people but because they were innocent. “
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With the sound that comes out of the voice broken by anguish, Isabel Magallanes, wanted to share with everyone present the farewell letter that her grandfather wrote to his wife before dying, while he was in the Ponferrada prison. He was, Isabel said, a “cheerful” baker who on September 24, 36, wanted to relate the “horror and fright” that he felt while expressing his will to give up the few memories he could leave, or rather a single ring, that he wanted to bequeath to one of his children:“forgive me for the only position in which I leave you”, said this day laborer who did not want to carry a grudge to the grave, “only the regret of not being able to return the money my brother lent me to open the bakery.”
At the age of 90, Esther Guerrero, daughter of the Hervededo teacher buried in this curve, assures that she has all my life thinking about him and remembering his farewell at the door of the house, that moment “in which the colors of my soul have gone”.
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The names of these 35 Bercians, together with their place of origin and the date of their death, already preside over what is known as ‘Curva de Magaz’, where some of them were executed during the repression of the civil war and subsequent dictatorship. Likewise, this place today symbolizes the memory of all the victims of the Franco regime found in Camponaraya or belonging to the municipal term and for whom the verse of Lorca is dedicated on a plaque: “On the flag of Liberty, I embroidered the most love great of life “.
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The councilor, who is also president of the León Provincial Council and PSOE provincial vice-secretary, promised to try to get the first vice president of the Government, Carmen Calvo, to deliver the documentation on each of the 35 reprisals to their family members in this place. , because, as he explained, the idea is that This act is the first of those that will take place every May 8 in memory of those executed.
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“Here we are remembering human beings who were executed for defending ideas different from those of the power of the time. They were brave and out of tune with the reality that they had to live. People, men and women, who were later abandoned in the gutters, a miserable and cruel act, but which, contradictorily, raised their names from the depths of the ground where they hid their bodies, to the highest of our recognitions ”, he pointed out. the mayor of Camponaraya and president of the León Provincial Council, Eduardo Morán, at the closing ceremony.
Morán has highlighted the Historical Memory Law approved in 2007 as a fundamental tool “when it comes to recognizing the rights of the victims and their relatives of the Spanish Civil War and Francoism” and has advocated for the new Democratic Memory Law in process to continue this work.
The organizers, Oli Vega and Lorena González, could not contain the emotion or the tears in speeches in which they applauded the role of “the women of the Reds” those who, as the poem recites, raised their children “worthy of their parents Braves “and they managed to make this a day of joy” because their memory and memory is still intact and their names will no longer be erased from history. “
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