Josep Antoni Fernández is a municipal police officer in Terrassa and, for 30 years, a passionate collector of war material from the Second World War. He began to fall in love with the weapons and uniforms of the war when he watched, with his father, the film The Longest Day, focused on the landing in Normandy, on June 6, 1944 (he will soon be 80 years old). ).
Between road safety classes, his family and the motorcycle, Fernández found a new vital driving force: the dissemination of this war among young people. “We teach war in a more playful way, in which students can see a lot of authentic material, up close, and touch it. That is not in the books,” he details. For four years, with Álex and Fernando, two friends, also amateurs, they visit the Terrassa institutes for free and offer a practical session.
On Thursday afternoon, they were in the fourth year ESO class at Escola Andersen. Álex, dressed as a German soldier, and Fernando, as an American paratrooper, showed imposing weapons such as a submachine gun. The students enjoyed so much novelty. Being clear that in wars “everyone who participates is a loser, except those who do business in it and earn a lot of money,” they expose curiosities about the soldiers, the spies (they cited Joan Pujol, Garbo, the Catalan spy who deceived the Nazis) or ironies of the time, such as that Hitler was “nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. What a visionary, who proposed it,” Álex assured, with sarcasm.
