In the throes of the Civil War, Catalan and Basque republicans crossed the border of the Pyrenees on foot in search of refuge. It was 1939 and in the Catalan case, Argelers beach “became its own concentration camp, where they died like flies,” declares Verónica Aranda, granddaughter of Abraham Ortega Aguayo, then Minister of Foreign Affairs of Chile.
That same year, the writer Pablo Neruda was appointed special consul for Spanish immigration in Paris. Neruda and Ortega were the architects of the Winnipeg, a cargo ship that occasionally became a passenger ship to take more than two thousand refugees to the Andean country (the figure is between 2,000 and 2,500 passengers), mostly Catalans and Basques, " towards a hopeful future,” recalls the granddaughter of the minister whose figure has been overshadowed by the public dimension of the person who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.
“My grandfather was in poor health, he suffered from diabetes,” Aranda continues, “and the pressure he received from the Chilean right to prevent these exiles from reaching Chile aggravated his condition. He presented his resignation to President Pedro Aguirre, but it was rejected, so the ship reached Valparaíso, where the more than two thousand Spanish exiles disembarked on September 3, 1939, just as the Second World War had just broken out. ”.
“The welcome in Chile was wonderful,” says Lola Patau, who was five years old when she boarded the Winnipeg. The ship left the Atlantic port of Paulhac, near Bordeaux, with her parents, an official of the Republican Generalitat. “My mother had crossed the border on foot twice. She first went to Argelers to see if my father was alive. When she found him, he went to Toulouse, where we had family, and my mother returned to Barcelona to pick me up. She sold the little we had and with four dresses each she crossed the border again, now with me. I remember those roads following the rivers to France, to meet the three of us in Toulouse. When my father saw that world war was about to break out and learned of Neruda's initiative, he went to Paris to talk to him.
“Already in Chile,” Patau continues, “my father founded a winery, Santa Lucía, and I studied journalism. I can say that I was the first female journalist in Chile with a university degree. From time to time they still remember it.” Patau she worked at El Debate and El Mercurio, and in 1963 she returned to Barcelona, where she married and founded her new family.
The testimonies interviewed are surprised that this story is so unknown in Spain, while in Chile it is remembered, "because the exiles were professionals who, with their work, helped the progress of Chile," declares Laura Martel, the playwright from Winnipeg. , Neruda's vaixell, which arrives at the Poliorama theater on Tuesday, directed by Norbert Martínez, and performances by Laia Alberch, Laura María González, Martí Salvat and Edu Tudela.
The work is based on a graphic story that Martel published in 2014. In 2020 he transformed it into a theatrical piece and it premiered at the Akadèmia theater. Now, after the pandemic and the tour, Winnipeg, Neruda's vaixell will be performed at the Rambla theater until January 23. “I discovered this beautiful story in 2010 and I was surprised that it was so unknown. Of those more than two thousand travelers, today there are 11,000 relatives, their descendants, who are called 'Neruda's children', in gratitude to the figure of the writer and diplomat," continues Martel.
“When I spoke to the survivors of the Winnipeg, I was surprised by the happiness and gratitude they all showed me. I, who work in documentaries and usually talk to people with hard stories, found that positive attitude wonderful.” With this work, the Canarian writer wants to highlight that “human solidarity is the antidote to the horrors of war” and that “the enemy is never the other, but prejudices and behaviors.” Martel affirms that “it is a beautiful story, that concerns us,” and she announces the film for this fall. “Spain still has an act of thanks to the Government of Chile pending,” recalls the playwright.
The director of the theatrical production, Norbert Martínez, explains: “The four performers represent many characters, who follow the journey of a girl. Her father is an architect, because one of the conditions that Chile set for boarding was that they be professionals, although he later skipped it. The operation was so successful that many of the Winnipeg's passengers did not return here. The one who tells the story is that girl's granddaughter, as happens in Martel's graphic novel, because it is important to remember deeds like this,” he concludes.
