“I was 4 and everyone was talking about the war and Franco. I didn´t know who he was but my family did not seem to like him. My mother would say “that man will be the death of Spain” and my father would tell her to be quiet.

My father owned two bakeries and we lived in a nice house. My father worked very hard. He was a quiet, intelligent man who had built a good business and was very much part of the local community. He was religious but not really interested in politics. He believed that the King was the rightful ruler of Spain by divine providence.

The change in our lives was so gradual that I did not really notice. First, my brother who was 6 and I were told that we were not to speak to anyone unless they were a member of the family. Then we were not allowed outside the garden and finally we were not allowed to go outside the house unless our mother was with us. My brother had gone to school but he stopped going and my father had new locks put on all the doors.

One Tuesday evening, our lives changed forever when a man came to the house and went in to the kitchen with my parents. A few minutes later he left and my mother came through with tears in her eyes and said we were all going on a journey. My mother packed a case, then she and my father sat on the sofa with the case and another little case which sat on my father´s knee. Eventually the man came back and we all left the house by the back door, we went along the edge of the river at the back of our house for a long time, so long that my father had to carry me. The man told us to wait by a tree in the dark. My father thanked him and he wished us luck.

A lorry came down the track and we all got in the back and daddy covered us with sacks of something which was light and soft and he told us not to speak. I am not sure how long we were in the lorry but it was daylight when we got out. The driver took us to a farmhouse and we stayed there for several days. The farmer´s wife was kind and made us nice food and we all slept together in one big bed. My daddy used to put the little case which had sat on his knee on the sofa the night we left our home in the middle of the bed between us at night.

That lorry was the first of 6 we travelled in over the course of several weeks. We always travelled by night and stayed in remote farmhouses between journeys. On our last journey the lorry stopped early in the morning when the sun was just coming up. We walked in to the local town to an address my father had been given. The lady led us up a stair to a room which had a small kitchen in one corner. There was a shared toilet on the landing. The room was simple and clean but very small. My father was keen that we had a room on the first floor and he looked out of both of the windows when we arrived. One window looked on to a small square and the other was just above a shed roof and had a view to the back garden and the fields beyond. I thought he was looking at the views.
The next day my father sat us at the table and told us that we were not to speak to anyone and we were to say that we were family of the lady who owned the house. We lived in that small room for the next 3 months. Gradually I gleaned information from conversation I heard between mummy, daddy and the lady who owned the room. Apparently Mr Franco as I called him did not like people who liked the King and that was why we had to leave our home. A friend found out that daddy´s name was on a black list and he was likely to be arrested. I was very frightened and I used to lie awake at night worrying that they would come for him. In time my father found a little bit of work in the town as a baker´s assistant and every week when he got paid the money would go in the little case that slept with us in the big bed every night.

As children our life was simple. We would go shopping with mummy but we never went to the town square or the park and we never went out after dark. My father would come home and we would all sit at the little table and talk. At night my father would lock the door and push a chair up to the door handle and he would always sleep with his trousers and shoes on which I thought was really odd as he never did it before.

Then one night when we were all asleep in the big bed, there was a terrible commotion outside. My father leapt from the bed and looked out the window to the square then within seconds he threw on his jacket, grabbed a bag which always sat by the window, opened the window and jumped. For a brief second before he jumped he looked at my mother with a look of love, fear and sadness which even as a young child I could read quite clearly. My mother shut the window and jumped back into bed. Within a minute the door to our room was kicked open. Men with guns demanded to know where my father was. The men searched the room but my father was gone into the darkness. When the men left, the lady who owned the house came and told my mother that we had to go as it was too dangerous for us to stay. So at daybreak we left with the big case and the little case. The lady told us to go to a big bridge where there were other homeless people.
We made our way to the bridge slowly as the big case was too heavy for my mother and she had to keep stopping and putting it down but she never let go of the little case. The bridge was quite a sight, there were several hundred people living there in a makeshift village. They had rough shelters and camp fires. Women washed clothes in basins and children played. My mother was introduced to the head of the camp, she explained what had happened and he said he recognised our name and had heard that we were in the area. He told my mother we were welcome and he took us to meet two ladies who helped us to settle in. Some of the camp men built a shelter for us. Although we lived rough in the camp with no electricity and only a standpipe which had been rigged up for water, the camp was run as a democracy and my mother said it was the only democracy in Spain at that time. There were strict rules for the camp and the men took turns to mount security patrols right through the night until daylight to protect us. The leader said that even the authorities were too scared to come in to the camp so we were safe.

We had been in the camp 4 or 5 months when we got news through the refugees network that my father was alive. He had made it over the mountains in to France with the help of some partisans. My mother was overwhelmed by the news, she just sat and sobbed for several hours. I think all the pain she had suffered during the time since we left our home just came out in one go.

We would get periodic updates on my father through the partisans who would pass messages backwards and forwards between the camp and the refugees in France. My father again managed to get a job in a bakery which I think was testament to his skills as a baker and he was living with some other men who had also escaped out of Spain. My father´s intention was to rejoin us as soon as possible but it was just too dangerous so he was advised to stay where he was.

The leader of the camp was true to his word and we lived in safety under the bridge for over 4 years. My mother managed to get a job in the town as a cleaner and although we had virtually nothing, every penny she earned went in to the little case. Every day she would be ready at 6am to go to work, with her hair neatly in a bun and if she had enough money to buy some, some lipstick on her lips. Her clothes would be neat and clean and to this day I don´t think the people she worked for knew she lived in the camp. Her wages were minimal but I think she felt the need to work to regain some of her dignity.
My brother and I had basic schooling in the camp from 3 ladies who had been school teachers. My education was limited but I can read, write and count. The camp grew rapidly and it was said that there were 2,000 people living under the bridge. Word of our existence got out of Spain and the authorities were ridiculed in the international press for allowing us to live like that. I think out of shame they started to build apartments. Each apartment was identical. They were quite roughly built and an apartment took up one floor of the building. It consisted of a room with a kitchen in one corner, one bedroom and a bathroom. Each family from the bridge camp was given one of these apartments. It did not matter if there were 3 people or 8 people in your family, you still got one apartment. For us it was luxury but the large families found it hard and the walls were so thin you could hear people snoring and coughing in the next bedroom.

They say that to every up there is a down and we had only been in the apartment a week or two when our door was kicked in by armed men looking for my father. They would shout at my mother and demand to know where he was. My mother would always say the same, “I don´t know where he is, he is probably dead”. I know it hurt her to say that but I think she thought it was the safest thing to say. The raids continued every week, sometimes twice a week for many years. In time the door stopped shutting properly and my mother would just push a chair against it so it would be easier to kick in the next time they called.

My mother kept working and saving. She said that it had cost my father a lot of money to get us to safety and if it had not been for the little case we would not have survived. She tried hard to replenish the little case from her earnings and it must have been hard to go to work when she was constantly woken in the middle of the night by the raids. Then for no apparently reason the raids became less frequent and finally after a long time stopped.
The men in France all wanted to return to Spain but they were advised to stay away until it was definitely safe, sadly some ignored that advice and having returned were rounded up. Nobody knows what happened to them. Eventually though, things went quiet and repatriations were organised. Many had fled and it took several weeks before we heard that my father was coming home. My mother took us to meet him and we stood at a barricade and we could see a lorry stop in the distance and men get off but I could not see my father. Even as the men came closer I still could not see my father and I started to think it had been a mistake and he was not on that lorry but then my mother started to wave and a grey haired, frail man waved back. I thought it might be a friend of my father´s and my mother wanted to ask if he has seen my father but no this poor man was my father. The years in exile had taken their toll, he was pale, thin, grey and tired looking. He grabbed me and held me so tight, then he said “how old are you Juana” – I was 16 years old.

My father came to live with us in the little apartment and life returned to normal – as normal as it had been for many years. Sadly my father only lived 18 months after he returned to Spain. He was a broken man in every possible way.

My brother left Spain and went to France to find work. He eventually married and still lives in France. In time I married a boy I grew up with in the camp and we both felt the need to get out of Spain so we went to England where we lived for the following 48 years. I am now 74 years of age and it has taken me all this time to feel that I wanted to return to the land of my birth.

My mother lived in the little apartment for the remainder of her life. We constantly asked her to move but she always refused. I think she felt close to my father there as the last time they had together was spent in those 4 little walls. I never saw my mother cry again after the day she was told that my father was safe in France. When I asked her many years later why she never cried she said “there have been enough tears to wash Spain clean” and that is how I feel, I bear the past no grudges, it was just something that happened and the only way for me is to move forward. I am enjoying my life in the country where I was born and I am glad I returned”.