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The Cinélatino festival, which spread the wings of its 31st edition on Toulouse, also paid tribute to the refugees and exiles of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). In February 1939, thousands were fleeing the advance of Franco's troops and seeking refuge north of the Pyrenees. Toulouse and its region have hosted many of these families who, the dictatorship of Franco dragging on, have taken root. In partnership with the Cervantes Institute of Toulouse was organized an evening in homage to the vanquished of the Retirada with the projection of the film " En el balcón vacio " of 1961, recounting the exile, first in France then in Mexico of a Spanish family. In the room the emotion, eighty years later, was palpable.
of our special correspondent in Toulouse,
Mexican film in black and white In el balcón vacio was filmed entirely in Mexico, including the sequences supposed to take place in Madrid or Paris. Little Gabriela tells the story of the end of the war and the exile with her mother and sister, mixing her memories, her emotions and her fears. Highly influenced by Cléo's 5 to 7 narrative of Agnès Varda and the Nouvelle Vague, the film is worn by little Nuri Pereña, who curiously reminds the young Ana Torrent in The Spirit of the Hive , by Victor Erice (1977) . The Cervantes Cultural Center has a copy of this rarely circulated film.
From the Spanish community of Toulouse to the festivals Cinespaña and Cinélatino, the bridges are numerous especially since it is partly thanks to the Hispanic genes of Toulouse - a shared history well before the Spanish Civil War - that these two meetings exist . The Cinémathèque of Toulouse, which hosts many screenings of the Cinélatino festival, which opened this weekend, was also a reception center for Spanish refugees in 1939 and the seat of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party in exile, we says Juan Pedro de Basterrechea, the director of the Cervantes Institute. And among the founders of the association at the origin of the Cinelatino festival, are descendants of Spaniards who had to flee Franco's Spain. It was therefore natural for the festival to join the memory work undertaken by the Cervantes Institute of Toulouse around the Retirada .
" The presses of the lost homeland "
The cultural institute organizes exhibitions, meetings and shows throughout the year. There was a high point at the end of February, during the commemorative days - on this occasion the head of government Pedro Sanchez came to France on the sites of the camps of Argelès and Collioure and on the tombs of Manuel Azaña and the poet Antonio Machado- but other appointments are proposed as the exhibition " Improntas of the patria perdida " (Presses of the lost homeland) which offers to discover the abundant editorial production of exile in Toulouse. Newspapers, novels, poetry, educational books including on female sexuality ... all these documents constitute the Fund of Exile of the Cervantes Institute of Toulouse. They tell of the imperious need of these exiles to preserve their language, their culture but also their political ideals as evidenced by the many publications emanating from the anarchist groups, to the point that one described Toulouse as "capital of exile libertarian ".
The double tragedy of Spanish refugees
Activities that have achieved a public success that even astonished the officials of the Cervantes Institute entrust us Juan Pedro de Basterrechea and Marie-Laure Cazeaux, in charge of the cultural activities of the Institute. Admittedly, the adult generation at the time of these events is no longer, but their children and descendants need to preserve this memory and respond to these tributes. " The history of the exiles is doubly tragic, " explains Juan Pedro de Basterrechea. They left Spain in very harsh circumstances, then in France were caught in the whirlwind of the Second World War especially as they " were labeled red, communist " and as such suspects in the eyes of Vichy and German occupation authorities. Exiles, many in the region, will engage in resistance.
The integration of Franco Spain into the concert of Nations in favor of the Cold War and then the cover of the crimes of civil war and dictatorship during the return to democracy, were a new tragedy. The exiles expected a recognition of their suffering and this recognition seems finally on the move. Pedro Sanchez 's trip to France bears witness to this, as well as several initiatives such as the exhumation of Franco ' s remains from Valle de los Caidos, near Madrid. A debate which is also invited in the electoral campaign for the next legislative elections in Spain.
► to (re) read : "The silence of others, justice against oblivion": Spain in his mirror
The collection work is multiple on this side of the Pyrenees. The department of Haute-Garonne participates and has launched a call to collect and digitize all traces of this memory . The magnificent Abattoirs museum , which hosts the exhibition "Presses de la patrie perdue", also offers an exhibition dedicated to Spanish artists in exile. "Picasso and Exile" explores the influence of the artistic tearing of exile by Picasso and contemporary artists. There are works by Remedios Varos who ended his life in Mexico, Juan Jorda and many others and very contemporary creations such as those of the artist and poet Serge Pey , born in Toulouse, son of a Spanish republican imprisoned in Argelès . As the poet Antonio Machado, who died of exhaustion at Collioure in February 1939, wrote, " el camino hace al andar ", the road is made on the road; a story always running so.
► to (re) listen : 80 years after the Retirada, the memory of the Argelès-sur-Mer camp