Some two hundred children of the war and of communist exiles in the Soviet Union who reside in Spain have stopped receiving the pension that, every three months, the Russian Public Pension Fund sent them, due to the sanctions imposed to Russia for the invasion of Ukraine, which prevent Spanish banks from paying remittances.
"I was born in Kharkiv, in 1940, so I wonder if I'm Ukrainian," ironically Nemesio Pozuelo, who was the top scorer in the USSR League in the 1971-1972 season as a center forward with the Moscow Torpedo shirt, one of the three big clubs in which he played alongside Spartak Moscow and Zenit St. Petersburg.
Nemesio Pozuelo lives retired in Velilla de San Antonio, on the outskirts of Madrid, along with his wife, Russian and with dual nationality, like most of those affected. He having scored a goal against Lev Yashin, the Black Spider, the most iconic footballer of communism, is not enough to pay for electricity. They receive the Spanish part of his pension (472 euros) but so far this year not one of the 168 euros per month contributed by the aforementioned Russian fund. “Things are very tough. Hope? You have to have it but I don't understand this. What fault do we have?
Those affected are a unique generation: wars marked their birth, wars mark their last years of life.
Santiago Álvarez was born in Havana in 1943, the son of the historic PCE leader –and founder of the Galician PC– of the same name, whom the Franco regime kept isolated in a cell in Logroño, number 8, between 1946 and 1951. He went into exile in Cuba for a short time because the dictator Batista expelled them from the island. The young Santiago ended up in the USSR at the age of 11, in the famous Ivánovo Children's House, where the children of high-ranking foreign leaders lived – “an elite education: we didn't have a free minute” – and studied Engineering. He settled in Spain in 1979 and his retirement lives here, with the loss this 2022 that the Russian part of his pension (10% of the total) is in limbo.
“The Russian Fund says that it sends the money, but it does not reach the Spanish banks. They give the option of charging it in rubles in Russia, so the Russian message is irreproachable, but the underlying thing is that it is a matter of putting pressure on the Spanish government to remove the sanctions”, estimates Álvarez.
Those affected have an age. For some, the possibility of collecting that Russian part of the pension in months or years is like raising a question to fate. And there is something even more disturbing: bureaucracy.
Natalia, Russian by birth, adopted Spanish nationality thanks to the legislation promoted by the Government of Felipe González, but prefers not to give her last name because she still has family in Russia. She speaks on her behalf Ana, her daughter. They settled in Spain when the collapse of the USSR, a social cataclysm for pensioners. Every month she stops paying 180 euros. And what is worse: to renew the “Spanish” pension – an annual procedure – the Pension Fund's collection certificate is required. “What if we can't have it this year? Many of my mother's friends can hardly afford to rent this year."
“This war depresses my mother. She does not understand that Ukrainians and Russians fight, for her they are the same. She is in shock, like her whole life: she was born in Moscow in 1938 and since they had Jewish origins they were sent to a prison camp...”, recalls Ana.
