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Summer is a time for gatherings and nostalgia to water our roots and remember human landscapes from the 50s when we were post-war children oblivious to the social drama that surrounded us.
Magical landscape for gypsies with bears and goats to improvise nocturnal circuses. They asked for volunteers and, after some magical passes in the air, they managed to get the children of Biescas to take 25 and 100 pesetas bills out of their noses and out of their pockets. For a while they were wealthy kids.
There were epidemics of “black measles” and infants who were breastfed survived. At school they gave supplements of powdered milk and yellow cheese “from the Americans.” The grandmothers offered biscuits dipped in anise to their grandchildren for breakfast and the snack was bread with wine.
That landscape was a Happy Arcadia for the kids who ran around the mountains, improvised skis with boards, played among the houses destroyed by the uncivil war, climbed the trees, skated on the frozen river, made snowmen and threw balls at the girls.
A municipal employee, Mr. Monterilla, worked as a snowplow with his shovel and lit the wood stove so that the students could go to school with Don Tomás Paúles. They read comics about Warfare, The Masked Warrior and Roberto Alcázar y Pedrín, next to the fireplace with logs crackling and cats curled up around their feet.
Now we remember that the Alto Aragonese mothers drew the most human landscape with their capacity for affection and suffering. They washed clothes in the river. They carried large bundles of grass on their heads, tended the fields and cattle, and made soap in large jars. They prepared the preserve. They took care of the house and the family with few resources. They were impressive women. They never complained. They were unsung heroines.
Almost no one remembers that María Martínez, from Monzón, was the mother of Joaquín Costa and took care of his Progressive Muscular Atrophy. In the Ruata de Binéfar house there is a portrait of Narcisa Ruata, mother of Mariano Pano Ruata.
In Peralta de la Sal, María Gastón gave birth to José de Calasanz, educator and saint. Leonor Negro de Fonz was the mother of Pedro Cerbuna, founder of the University of Zaragoza. Ana María de Montserrat y Ustaria and another daughter of Fonz, was the mother of Pedro María Ric. María Parera de Barbuñales had two illustrious sons: Félix de Azara and José Nicolás de Azara. María Dolores Albás, in Barbastro, was the mother of José María Escribá de Balaguer. María Fleta in Albalate de Cinca got her son Miguel Burro Fleta to bear her last name, universal tenor. Andrea Garcés in Chalamera had 17 children, the most important being the writer Ramón José Sender. Antonia Cajal Puente, from Larrés, had as her son a Nobel Prize in Medicine, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, who describes her thus in her books:
“My poor mother, already very economically prolific, of her own made incredible sacrifices to rule out all superfluous expenses and accept that regime of extraordinary forecast. It was necessary at all costs to make savings.”
Antonia Cajal subdued the anger of her strict husband Justo Ramón and secretly sent food to her son Santiago when he was punished, in a dark room, with bread and water for his mischief.
