Spanish Civil War Memory Project

Summary

Piquet was born in Barcelona on Nov. 24, 1934. Known as the "Nena del 36" for her interviews and efforts to rescue the memories of the witnesses and victims of the Spanish Civil War, she shares the personal satisfaction of having recovered her own childhood memories of the war. Her father, who fought on the republican side, was a construction worker affiliated with the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT). During the war Piquet experienced firsthand the devastation of bombardments in Barcelona. One of her earliest memories is of surviving the bombardment of her building and thinking a fellow survivor covered in dust was a baker covered in flour. In the winter of 1939 she accompanied her mother on foot during the mass exodus of republicans to the French border. Piquet and her mother spent the next decade exiled in various small towns in France. In 1943 her father was detained by the Gestapo in Bordeaux and sent to a concentration camp, but was freed later. By 1950 Piquet's family had returned to Barcelona