Spanish Civil War Memory Project

Summary

Clotilde Vega was born to Republican parents. Clotilde recounts that during the Civil War, she was evacuated from Madrid along with thirty-five other children. She details their trajectory, led by a schoolteacher, to Barcelona and subsequently across the Pyrenees on foot during the winter. They lodged in a cinema in France and afterward traveled by train to Belgium, where they first stayed at a hotel for rail workers and then were adopted by Belgian families. Their migration lasted four weeks. In 1945, Clotilde returned to Madrid for three years. She describes the stifling conditions of life under the Francoist dictatorship. Clotilde returned to Spain a second time to marry her Belgian fiancé and after that they moved to the Belgian Congo. She narrates their years in residence in the colony and notes her eventual return to Spain. Clotilde has maintained contact with those with whom she was evacuated. She is dedicated to speaking about her experiences and the effects that the Civil War has had on her life and the lives of her family members, including her uncle who was in hiding for being an enemy of the Falange. Clotilde discusses Spanish and international politics and the possibility of maintaining hope alive in the present