My neighbour Andres´ memories of the Civil Spanish War by Juan Antonio García

Juan Antonio´s interview.

My name is Juan Antonio.  I´m 17 years old.I live in La Unión and I study at Maria Cegarra Secondary School.

 I´ve made an interview to my neighbour Andrés Vidal who told me about his life. He lived during the Civil War and his life is very interesting.

He´s 90 years old and he was born on 1st September 1923 in La Unión.

He spent his childhood between La union and Cartagena.

Andrés had a sister who was 3 years younger than him, but she died very young.

 His father worked in many places, such as, the Peñarroya Mine and Cartagena Port. His mother was a housewife.

Andrés and his friends usually played top, marbles, football with a rag ball in the street…

He went to school until when he was 12 years old.

The school had a blackboard, a desk where five students sat… and a few things more. The school was in Cartagena and there were 50 students more or less. These students were of different ages and they were in the same class. Mr. Carlos was the higher students´ teacher and he had an assistant. Mr Carlos´ wife was Ms. Ramona. She was the youngest´s teacher. The students went to school in the morning and in the afternoon, but they ate at home.

When the Civil War started, Andrés left the school, and his family moved from Cartagena to La Unión, and he started to work in his uncle´s garage.

Five planes bombed Cartagena every day. For this reason, they moved to La Unión and then they moved to El llano. There, they slept in his uncle´s mine because it was safer.

His two uncles went to the Civil War. When the War finished, they worked as truck drivers and they gave Andrés´ family a little bit of food. They survived with that food.

He didn´t have dreams. He could only work to eat.

He didn´t think about his future. He spent his money on food.

His first trip was when he went to Murcia for a funeral. Then, he travelled to Valencia and Zaragoza with the army.

When Andrés was in the army and he was 21 years old, he had a partner who was from La Palma. They were in Valencia and one day Andrés went to his partner´s house. There, he met his wife and they felt in love. Five years after, they got married. Her name is Florentina.

Andrés got along with his neighbours.

He worked very much, occasionally more than 12 hours per day, for this reason, he didn´t have much free time but his best years were when he was with his wife and his daughters.

He didn´t fancy telling me about the new generation. I am sure it is because of the situation in Spain. The life nowadays is completely different from some years ago. Now, we are lucky because we are not living with bombs around us, however, our ancestors feel bad thinking on us, because the politic situation is getting worse and worse and they want us to go through a situation better than ages ago.