“Walking in your footsteps” by Léonor de Récondo: crossing the Spanish border with no return
Published on Reading time: 2 min
Spanish refugees watch the burning of their city of Irun from the beach at Hendaye
(Pyrénées-Atlantiques), in 1936. Hulton Deutsch / Corbis / Getty Images
By recounting the life of her grandmother fleeing Francoism, Léonor de Récondo reconciles herself with her Spanish roots.
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I subscribeA date, August 18, 1936. And everything changed. An earthquake for Enriqueta, but also, decades later, for her granddaughter, Léonor de Récondo. In 1936, they had to cross the border: the Basque Country was cut in two, and the French side was a refuge for all those – women and children – fleeing the men in Franco's pay. The same night, at another border crossing, the poet Federico Garcia Lorca was executed. He was with three other condemned Republican supporters: "What are these men thinking as they walk toward their final solitude? I don't know. Invention cannot enter this intimate and sacred space ," insists Léonor de Récondo. " But I see them. "
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