He arrived discreetly from Toulouse. The flight from France to Barajas airport took 55 minutes and was parked in front of terminal T4 on the morning of March 29. Fresh from the Airbus assembly plant, shiny new, Iberia’s most modern Airbus 320 will begin passenger flights in the coming days. This wouldn’t have much more history if it weren’t for the fact that, in addition to the registration number EC-NZP, the company’s new plane has its own name: MarÃa Pepa Colomer, a pioneer who is returning to the skies 92 years after obtaining her pilot’s title.
The cover of the Notas Gráficas section of La Vanguardia on January 22, 1931 had a unique protagonist: MarÃa Josefa Colomer. The photo caption said that “he had brilliantly obtained the title of pilot-aviator at the Escola d’Aviació Barcelona, ​​de l’Aeròdrom”. The young pilot appeared dressed in a white, grease-stained frog, with her hands in her pockets and next to one of the biplanes she learned to fly. At the age of 18, she had become the first Catalan and the fourth Spanish woman to get her wings.
Restless since childhood, Mari Pepa’s first flying experience was a jump with an umbrella from the family home, on a second floor. The umbrella broke, as did both of his legs. He did not return there, although studying at the Institute of Culture and Popular Library of the Dona boosted his interest in flying. He was inspired by the American pilot Amelia Earhart, 16 years older and perhaps the most famous aviator of all time. Endorsed by her father, Josep Colomer, and secretly from her mother, Maria Encarnació, Mari Pepa began to receive lessons at the school directed by Josep Canudas, who was convinced that the desire to fly was not a a passing whim but an authentic vocation, which is why she became a student of both Canudas and Josep Maria Carreras, two pioneers of Catalan aviation. In eight months and with 60 hours of flight he got the title. Mrs. Luque officially learned that she had an aviator daughter when the photo published in La Vanguardia appeared.
Colomer wanted to continue gaining experience and improving his skills: he dedicated himself to doing aerial baptisms from El Prat and his story inspired the second local pilot, Dolors (Lolita) Vives. In the spring of 1931 he was in command of one of the planes that flew over Barcelona celebrating the establishment of the Second Republic. She spent all the time she could in the air and in 1935 she became the first Spanish flight instructor. With former aviation professors and other professional colleagues, he founded the first aerial work cooperative in the country and the Catalan aviation school.
During the Civil War he trained new pilots for the forces of the Spanish Republic, made propaganda flights, liaison, coastal surveillance and some wounded evacuations. In the last months of the conflict, he went into exile in France with his friend and mentor, Josep Maria Carreras, whom he later married and had two children with. In a first stage they lived in Toulouse and settled in England. Carreras worked as a pilot for William Maxwell Aitken, banker, media magnate and minister to Winston Churchill.
20 years ago, in March 2003, at the request of businesswoman and pilot Mercè MartÃ, the general secretary of Sport of the Generalitat held an event in tribute to Mari Pepa Colomer and Dolors Vives. In Getafe and Madrid there are streets reminiscent of Colomer. In Barcelona, ​​near the old Sagrera freight station, a small garden was named after him. In Prat de Llobregat, the character is remembered with the Pepa Colomer, a school center for children, primary and secondary. Mari Pepa Colomer avenue is also an airport road, which passes through the back of the Iberia maintenance hangar, an airline that now remembers it with a new A320 Neo, a model that usually covers the air bridge with Madrid, and the VIP waiting area of ​​Aena’s T1 was named the Colomer room years ago. With all this, the circle closes, since everything is in the Barcelona airport area, which occupies the same land where this pioneer learned to fly.
