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Madrid (EFE) they undertake for a “sentimental” reason.
“The consulate (in Argentina) is overwhelmed with the ‘grandchildren’s law.’ Getting a turn is practically impossible,” Gustavo Corach told EFE in reference to the Democratic Memory Law, which allows children and grandchildren of exiles during the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship to claim Spanish nationality.
In his case, he wants to apply for Spanish nationality because he is a descendant of a brigade member, a possibility that this law also contemplates, and he plans to travel to Spain to do the paperwork given the difficulties he has encountered in Argentina, his country of residence.
“My motivation would say that it is sentimental. I don’t think I’ll use Spanish nationality, the passport, if the process goes through. But it’s just something my father would have liked,” says Gustavo, 71, the son of Luis Corach, who joined the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.
Specifically, his father traveled from Argentina to Spain at the beginning of 1937 to support the Republican faction motivated by his political convictions and dedicated himself mainly to assisting the wounded, being a medical student at that time, until he went into exile in France in 1939. where he ended up in concentration camps.
“He was always a man of the left,” says Gustavo, who regrets that his father could not apply for Spanish nationality because he died when the Government first gave the brigade members the opportunity to do so through a Royal Decree in 1996, since that assures that “Spain had it inside”.
In 2007, the Historical Memory Law facilitated the process by avoiding the brigade members having to renounce their previous nationality.
And the Democratic Memory Law that came into force last October expanded the possibility of applying for Spanish nationality to the descendants of brigade members, a relevant step considering that the last brigade member died in 2021.
Consulates without information
Adrián Bodek, 69, a resident of Mexico, regrets that in his country’s consulate “they had no idea” about the possibility that the descendants of brigade members could apply for nationality by naturalization letter (a measure of grace).
He will also travel to Spain to work on a project and, incidentally, do the paperwork in memory of his grandfather, Günter Bodek, of German origin.
The Civil War caught him in Spain, where he had emigrated with his family after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, and after unsuccessfully trying to join the Republican army, he ended up in charge of the International Brigades hospital located in Benicasim (Castellón).
“My grandfather was the director of the hospital and my grandmother (Käte Kirstein) was an X-ray assistant,” says Adrián, who explains that in 1942 they both emigrated from Spain to Mexico, where they acquired Mexican nationality after having lost their German nationality years ago.
Adrián currently has dual German and Mexican nationality, but he would be very interested in acquiring Spanish because he assures that he feels “very identified” with Spain, where his father also lived.
“In Mexico I studied at the Luis Vives Institute, where my father was also and which was founded by Spanish Republicans. My teachers were Spanish and part of my friends are the children of Spaniards”, he points out.
Daughter of a Spanish brigade member
Although the vast majority of members of the International Brigades were foreigners (specifically, there were more than 35,000 men and women from 53 different countries, according to the Association of Friends of the International Brigades), there are exceptions such as Eugenio Pacha, a Spaniard who served as a political commissar.
After the Civil War, he crossed the Spanish border with France, was in two French concentration camps and came to fight in the neighboring country during World War II, where he met his wife.
“He continued his political commitment in exile without holding any position,” his 77-year-old daughter, Victoria Pacha, told EFE, who was born in France and from there accompanied her parents on a long journey that took them to Algeria, Hungary and since 1963 to Cuba, where his father remains buried, who recovered Spanish nationality in 1978, ten years before he died.
Victoria was stateless until she was 22 years old and currently has French nationality, the country where she resides, but she would like to acquire Spanish through the memory law as a way of paying “tribute” to her father, despite the fact that in her case she could request it another way, being the daughter of a Spaniard.
“He fought all his life for an ideal and, since he was Spanish, in my mind I was always Spanish, since I grew up in a Spanish environment. It is something that I have wanted for a long time and that I can do now ”, comments Victoria, who also admits to having “difficulties ”in making arrangements in France, for which she will travel to Spain.
On the other hand, other descendants of brigade members such as Steve Bennett, an Englishman residing in Spain, are interested in applying for nationality but they are not going to do so for economic reasons, since they cannot “afford the expenses” of the procedures, which he estimates at around of a thousand euros.
The Brigadistas Association helps with applications
Sources from the Association of Friends of the International Brigades denounce to EFE the difficulties and “lack of collaboration” of the consulates as they are “collapsed” by other nationality demands.
For this reason, they believe that the Spanish Government decided to approve the urgent processing of a royal decree at the beginning of May to try to “expedite the procedures” on these specific cases of petition for nationality.
Meanwhile, the association is taking care of informing the descendants of brigade members about the procedure and has already attended to a total of 58 requests from individuals.