He is 103 years old!
There are already many.
What is his secret?
The olive oil.
Yeah?
I always had a bottle of my olive oil with me.
Do you have olive trees?
In my hometown, the Torms, like my parents, my grandparents...
What variety are they?
Arbequina I founded the Cooperativa dels Torms in my town...
Did you get into politics?
No. I was just a farmer.
How did you live the war?
Like thousands of 18-year-old Catalan boys: I was touched by the so-called baby bottle cam.
It also happened to my paternal uncle Josep Amela, what a misfortune...
He died?
No, because a bullet badly wounded him in La Pobla de Massaluca and he was evacuated.
I was also at the Battle of the Ebro.
And on the Segre front, before, how was my uncle there?
Not me, because I ran away and hid.
This carried the death penalty!
But I didn't want to shoot. I refused to kill. I didn't want to make a war.
Did you witness crimes in the Torms?
CNT-FAI patrols in 1936 burned the church, made a bonfire with carvings of saints and mass books...
When did they call you to the ranks?
It was March 1938, when I was 18 years old. I showed up at Mollerussa and they cut us: I was 1.60 meters tall.
Didn't he get rid of it?
No one was released! They needed us all. On the 30th, at the end of the day, they give us a shout and tell us that at ten in the morning we are leaving for Cervera...
Do you see it?, towards the front of the Segre...
After twenty minutes on the road, my friend Eladi and I escaped: we returned to the village at night, so as not to be seen.
I am pensat.
We hid, from April to August, in a farmer's hut in the middle of the countryside.
No more shocks?
We were afraid of being seen and reported by a neighbor, but luckily that was not the case. We ate what a relative brought us.
When did they leave the house?
A government order exempted all ambushes from depending on if they presented themselves before September 15.
The Manaies needed more cannon fodder for the Ebro front.
Eladi and I presented ourselves to the authorities. They took us to Montblanc, we did shooting practice: it was five bullets per soldier. I fired my first shot.
And then... on the Ebro front?
Yes, in some trucks, over a bridge over the river. We arrived at night at a trench. It was October 6, the International Brigades had just been repatriated. With another boy we did the first guard.
Did it go into combat?
Two days later a shower of projectiles fell on us, an exploding bullet tore off my rifle, shattered the butt. I was covered in gravel and branches because a shell exploded nearby.
But he survived.
A miracle After a whole day without food, I went out to pick grapes: "You wretch!" one of our officers shouted at me: he almost shot me thinking I was escaping.
Did you have the idea of escaping?
When we were placed in a forward guard position - it was certain death!
And he deserted?
I put on what I had, abandoned the rifle, and with another comrade we ran towards the enemy lines. Already close, we took out white handkerchiefs and shouted: "Nacionales, no tirar, nos pasamos!".
And they didn't shoot?
"What did you take?" asked a voice. "Just the blanket", we said. "You can pass", he ordered. They were pugs. Since my friend had been rude, they treated us well and we stayed in Vilalba dels Arcs and Batea.
In August there had been a great slaughter of requetes.
I knew it. My friend joined them. I preferred to be a prisoner than to be a soldier.
Where did they take him?
In slave labor battalions across Spain, with hunger, walks, punishments, beatings... They let me go in June 1940 and I returned home... already at 20 years old.
And then what?
I worked in the fields and got married. In 1956 the olive trees were frozen. And from 1960, at the age of 40, I worked at the Marcel bar, on Carrer Llobregós in Barcelona.
Did it go well?
Yes, but I missed the field. I retired thirty years later... and we returned to the village. Every day I walked to my garden, with the hoe on my shoulder. I don't want many things.
