Eve Battle | Valencia (EFE) “When there is no one left” (Grijalbo), the debut as a novelist by Esther López Barceló, an expert in physical and forensic anthropology, archaeologist, teacher and former deputy.
The novel is set between the postwar period and the beginning of the 21st century, in Alicante, her hometown, with several generations of humble, coherent and “very dignified” women, relegated to the “perpetual care” of the family, a role that “was believed secondary, when care is the basis of society’s survival,” López recounted in a conversation with EFE.
These women, whose stories are inspired by the real life of her grandmother and great-grandmother and the stories they transmitted to her, also serve the author to portray this historical period and address the collective “silence” and “solitude” of the families of those who have suffered reprisals. Francoism and their fight to recover the remains of their loved ones.
Memory, common thread of the novel by Esther López
A family memory that also marked the life and professional career of the writer and a “memorialist” activism, which led her to study archeology and anthropology and to volunteer in the first exhumations of those retaliated against by the Franco regime in 2004, in Almansa (Albacete).
From this experience, he remembers the day that among the remains of the bones belonging to a man they found a ring, carved from an apricot kernel, similar to the one his daughter kept, present at the exhumation, at a “very exciting” moment and a satisfaction for “having contributed a grain of sand to this personal reparation”.
López also explains that in the work, precise scientific documentation of the remains was ensured, according to the Minnesota protocol, “so that it can serve as expert evidence in a future criminal proceeding and that the traces of the crime are well documented.”
“In the field of justice, Franco’s impunity was absolutely tied up and well tied up and that will always be an anomaly with which we will bear,” laments the writer.
The novel also addresses the family “voice of memory”, of people “humble, who never gave themselves importance, that social class that Francoism wanted to pulverize and make disappear,” says López, who pays tribute to his grandmother Pilar, a cleaner , and his grandfather Gabriel, a railway worker, and “all those life stories that have been relegated to oblivion.”
In those memories there are also stories of patriarchal violence, hidden in the privacy of homes, suffered by another of the characters in the novel inspired by Ana Orantes, the first woman to publicly denounce male violence in Spain, “and thereby contribute to that their vital struggle should not be forgotten, “he says.
The bombing of the Central Market of Alicante
The book also portrays historical moments as relevant as the bombing of the Central Market of Alicante, on May 25, 1938, by Italian planes and with more than 300 deaths, “from which my aunt got rid of because she got out of the fishmonger’s queue minutes before the bombs fell”, recalls the author.
The novel makes spatial and temporal leaps, from the 1940s to 2007, a year, he points out, “in which the victims’ associations were still in the most absolute solitude demanding the exhumation of the remains of their relatives.” and seeing how the authorities constantly said no.
“Fortunately, the Democratic Memory Law has now been approved, much more guaranteeing, but without guaranteeing access to justice for the victims,” he laments.
“To speak of memory is to speak of the future”
Esther López, deputy for Esquerra Unida in the Valencian parliament between 2011 and 2015, has recently been appointed head of the Didactic Classroom for Democratic Memory, promoted by the Department of Education of the Generalitat Valenciana and located in the monastery of San Miguel de los Reyes de València, a former Francoist prison and where this interview was done.
The classroom will offer the students of the Comunitat complementary activities so that they know the social, political and cultural effects of the Franco dictatorship in the territory.
«Speaking from memory is talking about the future, because it is advancing in democracy and telling what happened, trying to repair the damage; Doing pedagogy on democratic values is essential for any society to continue advancing and not go backwards, “reflects López.
