It has now been a good twenty years since the CNT-AIT, we denounce the
political exploitation which is made of the memory of the anti-Francoexile in France, and in particular of its participation in the fight
against the Nazi occupation. ----- The Spanish exiles, after having been
superbly ignored since the post-war period - the time was then for
National Unity behind De Gaulle and/or the Communists, and it was
necessary to give substance to the myth of France Résistante - suddenly
became "trendy" in the early 2000s. French political parties - all
tendencies combined - then remembered their existence. Because in the
meantime they had had children, who in certain regions (South-West /
Occitanie, Paris, etc.) represent a percentage of the electorate which
can make the difference at a time when elections are won or lost by one
or two percent difference...
Also, we regularly witness a succession of commemorations in which we
flatter the Spanish identity of the descendants of exiles, but without
really saying anything about what motivated the commitment.
politics of their ancestors, when it is not by completely distorting it.
In particular, the tens of thousands of anarchist refugees who had
fought for the Revolution and the abolition of the State, now see
themselves during the commemorations erected as defenders of the French
Republic, when not outright as precursors of the Pact of national
reconciliation (Pact of Montcloa), pact of forgetting and compromise
concluded between the elites which allowed the maintenance of the
Spanish Monarchy after the death of Franco! It must also be said that
the politicians had the good taste to wait until the direct actors of
the Spanish exile had all died, this saved them from having to hear
their protests against these maneuvers.
However, not all descendants of exiles are fooled by political
shenanigans. Thus, the CTDEE (Toulouse Center for Documentation on
Spanish Exile) has just sent a response to
the AAGEF-FFI (Amicale of former Spanish guerrillas in France - FFI),
following their invitation, to participate in the company of the State,
its armed and police forces, and two political parties (Parti
Communist and France Insoumise), at a military ceremony benefiting from
the official label "Mission Liberation of the State", on June 1, 2024.
The CDTEE - which was invited very late, only 5 days before the event -
declined the invitation on the grounds that it is not part of its
activities to participate in military ceremonies, but also that
the AAGEF participate in the ambient republican revisionism, aiming to
make believe that all the anti-Franco exiles were unanimous and that all
those who took an active part in the resistance against the
Nazism grouped behind the Communist Party and its Guerrillas...
We are relaying this open letter from the CDTEE here, because we share
its analyzes and conclusions.
Fernand PELLOUTIER, the anarchist pioneer of French revolutionary
syndicalism said "we do not sit at tables that we wish to overturn". In
the same way, we cannot parade with the
institutions (State, police, army) whose responsibility for the
martyrdom of Spanish exiles in France from 1939 is overwhelming.
Companions of the CNT-AIT
TOULOUSE DOCUMENTATION CENTER ON SPANISH EXILE
12, rue des cheminots 31500 Toulouse
? 09 61 42 74 48/05 62 18 57 80/09 82 57 24 75 Email:
exilEspagne.tlse@gmail.com
At AAGEF-FFI
6 rue du Lieutenant-Colonel Pelissier
31000 Toulouse
Toulouse on May 28, 2024
Ladies and gentlemen,
Following your letter of May 25, 2024 inviting us, belatedly, to
participate in a commemorative day, June 1, in HONOR TO THE SPANISH
GUERRILLARS, LIBERATORS OF THE FAITH, we see ourselves in a moral
obligation to clarify to you that we will not will not participate for
several reasons, which we will explain below:
1 - If it is not our primary vocation to participate in
political-military-memorial type demonstrations, we do not forget the
fights led by Spanish refugees against Nazism, some of them from 1939,
independently or in the ranks of the French and English Resistance and
in all sorts of other ways. For our part, we rather favor their
contribution to the civic and social life of the places where they
worked, studied for some, with their permanent and stubborn concern to
fight against Francoism, while promoting their popular culture and that
of their country of origin. 'origin. We only want as proof, among other
activities, the biannual publication - for 10 years now - of our Cahiers
du CTDEE and the commemoration, every year, on July 19, of the popular
response to the uprising of the rebels of the July 18, 1936. In another
vein, let us also add the Spanish Exile Book Day which every two years
brings together authors with a broad interest in Spain and its exiles;
this year the day will take place on November 23.
2 - Your endless exclusive highlighting of the Guerrillas clearly
highlights the pretension, already at work in 1944, to enlist all of the
Spanish resistance fighters in this structure while a large number of
them were scattered in French or multinational groups (for example 50
Spaniards in the Plateau des Glières or among 26 nationalities in the
Leclerc Division). The Guerrillas were "the armed wing" of the UNE
(Unión Nacional Española) controlled by the PCE (Partido comunista de
España) and the PSU de C (Partit socialista unificat de Catalunya), two
organizations at that time of the Soviet sphere , and therefore
inevitably Stalinist.
3 - The unfortunate plaque to the glory of Guerrillas - In homage to the
Spanish Guerrillas - FFI and other freedom fighters who died for France
- surreptitiously placed in a public square in Cahors in 2011, at the
same time as a welcome plaque and consensual - PLACE OF THE SPANISH
REPUBLICANS -, gave rise to a lively controversy and sparked a petition
at the request of a historical and memorial association (Research and
documentation of Contemporary History) which requested that a less
partisan formulation - In homage to the Spaniards died for freedom - be
adopted. The CTDEE signed this petition as well as a number of other
memorial associations. Three hundred people, the vast majority refugees
or descendants of the 2nd or 3rd generation, sometimes even former
resistance fighters, scientific personalities as notable as Geneviève
Dreyfus-Armand or Pierre Laborie also got involved. They have received,
from you, only insults and opprobrium. Note also that personalities
representative of the Spanish exile in Toulouse did not hesitate for a
second: for example José Martínez Cobo (PSOE-UGT), Floréal Samitier
(CNT), the painter and sculptor Joan Jordà, Antonio Nacenta and
Francisco Larrea (members of Francisco Ponzán Vidal's group of
smugglers), the academics Vida MansóZabraniecki, Tomás Gómez, Mario
Borillo, who began his journey of exile in 1940 in Castelnau-Durban (see
point 4), etc.
On this occasion we were able to observe some significant developments:
o the MJC (House of Youth and Culture) of Cahors requested that its name
be removed from the 2nd plaque.
o Rodolfo LLopis-Boyé, son of Rodolfo LLopis-Ferrándiz (former Minister
of the Spanish Republic, former President of the Council of the Republic
in exile and former Secretary General of the PSOE in exile, for 34
years) declared: "Believe that I am at your side in your efforts to
reestablish the historical truth concerning the Guerrillas. In this
sense, I think I will remain faithful to the memory of my father. I
admit to having been trapped in Cahors..."
-Historians, Hispanists and academics, members of the Présence de Manuel
Azaña de Montauban association, in February 2012, indignantly supported
the recognized historian, Geneviève Dreyfus-Armand, victim of false,
defamatory and above all anonymous comments written in the bulletin n°
124 of the Amicale des Anciens Guérilleros en France FFI. The late
Pierre Laborie, historian and director of studies at EHESS, concluded:
"...The death of the Spanish Republic was the unworthy triumph of
injustice in history. Loyalty to this long wound and to the sacrifice of
many Spanish Republicans in the Resistance in France imposes ethical
demands on those who avail themselves of it. It would be a new betrayal
to abandon this noble cause at the risk of imposture that certain
opportune reconstructions of memory run. "There is no rest in the
truth," wrote Albert Camus (Combat, March 29, 1945) who, regarding Spain
and the Resistance, had some merits to assert."
o As for the discussions that Ángel Carballeira (member of our
association) had with Lionel Jospin, then head of the Commission for the
Renovation and Ethics of Public Life, they could only reassure him in
his approach.
The fact that your association has remained completely deaf to these
requests, although very moderate, illustrates how your concern for
hegemonic public representativeness prevails over common sense and ethics.
4 - Lacazasse killing
Although we want to impose a deafening silence on this event which
occurred in the hamlet of Lacazasse, commune of Castelnau-Durban, on
July 15, 1944, five weeks before the Liberation of Ariège, we
nevertheless were murdered, in atrocious conditions, 7 people including
two children - Isabelle 7 days old and her sister Prosperitat 6 years
old. This killing, which has many similarities with that perpetrated in
the commune of Auriol in July 1981 by thugs from the SAC (Civic Action
Service), one of our members, Ángel Carballeira, decided to document it
and to do so investigated in the commune of Castenau-Durban and in
various archive centers; he made a Dossier that we published in No. 15
of Cahiers du CTDEE: "True Justice is not revenge, but memory." A local
historian, André Baland, specialist in the Ariège maquis of Couserans
and Crouzette, helped situate the event in its spatio-temporal context.
Without any ambiguity, the responsibility for this killing falls on the
Guerrillas. André Baland has also published the results of his research
in Maitron.
Faced with immobility and general inertia, Ángel Carballeira published
and distributed, at his own expense, a succinct report on the Lacazasse
massacre which he entitled We do not write History with an eraser[nice
title]. To illustrate the blind violence that fell upon non-Stalinist
refugees at that time, he even attached a short document on the
assassination (October 21, 1944) of Auxiliano Benito Pérez, secretary of
the Toulouse section of the PSOE. . A very beautiful photo of Enrique
Tapia at his funeral reports this episode. A crowd estimated at 6,000
people was present that day.
Obviously, these dramatic events take nothing away from the value of the
Spaniards' commitment to the Resistance, whether they are Guerrillas or
not; but by wanting to hide them, we radically betray their commitment
to a better world... and also, unfortunately, the historical truth.
In conclusion:
The Spanish republican exile was not monolithic, far from it. The
fractures between Spanish Republicans even heralded the clashes between
the totalitarian and non-totalitarian lefts. Of course, this played out
over time - sometimes with sudden jumps - at the level of the political
philosophy of each party. Without even taking into account previous
antagonisms, if we want to put a precise date on this total divorce in
exile, we will bring forward the date of July 11, 1948.
Why July 11, 1948? That day a large meeting was held at the Mutualité in
Paris to demand the return of pilots and sailors from the Spanish
Republic interned at the Karaganda camp, in the Soviet Gulag. All
political organizations in exile were represented. Absolutely all...
Except the Partido Comunista de España and the Partit Socialista
Unificat de Catalunya. Should we say why?
Albert Camus also resolutely engaged in this... premonitory battle? You
have to imagine Sisyphus happy.
The president of the CTDEE
Place Marey-Thibon
PS: We consider this letter as an open letter
https://cntaittoulouse.lautre.net/spip.php?article1403
_________________________________________
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