Spanish Civil War Memory Project

Summary

Isabel Aillón Murgi was born in 1917 in Barcelona. Isabel recounts being eighteen years old when the Civil War began. She remembers her militancy in the Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya (Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia). Isabel relates organizing a volunteer workshop that made clothes for the militias. She comments that her husband, Juan Pinós Lacambra, joined the Granada Front. Isabel speaks of joining the retreat to France when Franco entered Barcelona, and describes a massive bombardment that occurred as they neared Figueras. She recalls entering France, being put in a refugee camp in the Saint-Cyprien beach, and being placed in an abandoned silk factory near Lyon. Isabel details their living conditions, noting that her son was born inside the factory and died at seven months from destitution. She explains that her husband was imprisoned in Collioure, France. Isabel tells of fleeing to Paris in search of her uncle, working as a designer, reuniting with her husband, returning to Spain in 1940, and forming a family in Barcelona. Isabel indicates that in 1945 the Falangists detained and executed her husband. She narrates leaving to France in 1953 with her children, working as a designer for a select clientele, and returning to Spain after finding out that the French police collaborated with the Gestapo. Isabel discusses changes she would like to see occur in the future