Spanish Civil War Memory Project

Summary

Carmen Casas Godessart was born in 1921 in Alcalá de Gurrea. Carmen recounts moving to Almacelles in 1934 and joining the Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas (Unified Socialist Youth) at age fifteen. Carmen recalls the improvements in the quality of life, education, and women's conditions during the Republic, and the formation of the Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya (Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia) in 1936. Carmen remembers the Civil War, explaining that her family moved to Barcelona in 1938 and sought refuge in France in 1939. Carmen relates joining the Resistance and meeting her husband, Leandro Saún, who fought in the war, fled to France, was detained in the Argelès-sur-Mer concentration camp, returned to Spain in 1943, and in 1944 was arrested, imprisoned in Torrero, and sentenced to death. Carmen narrates that she returned to Spain in 1944, was detained at the border, was taken to the police station in Figueras, was imprisoned for one month in Gerona, was detained a second time in Zaragoza, and was sentenced to thirty years in jail and given two death sentences. Carmen describes how her sentence was reduced to eighteen months in jail and Leandro's death sentence was commuted. Carmen and Leandro detail the prisons' horrible conditions, noting the tortures to which Leandro was subjected. Carmen discusses her and Leandro's political work, the Transition, and the recuperation of historical memory