The Spanish victims of Putin's invasion: 'Children of War' without pensions due to the bank embargo on Russia

• RAFAEL J. ALVAREZ

  Madrid

• MARIA HERNANDEZ

  Madrid

Updated Friday, September 23, 2022-02:03

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Honorina has been greeting this neighborhood of

with her laugh of the century, 97 years of humour, strength and history.

-And how do you see Spain now?

-With two questions!

Two, huh!

And in that he sits on a bench, caresses a bottle of cider that we have brought him as a souvenir of his land and rescues a memory.

-I got on the boat in

and carried my two little brothers in one hand and a typewriter in the other.

-A writing machine?

-Yes, because my father told me: 'As long as you have a typewriter you won't miss a piece of bread'.

In

I used it to write letters, but on the trip it served as a pillow.

Her name is

and she is one of the 3,000 girls and boys who escaped the Francoist offensive in

and the

during the

and came to the

to reopen a life that

interrupted again .

And she is one of the

who for several months this year

because some Spanish banks have interpreted that aid to be included in the economic sanctions against Russia for the invasion of Ukraine.

Who was going to tell them that now, bordering on the century of life, they would be victims again?

They are the Boys and Girls of the Three Wars.

We are talking about people aged 89 and over who studied, grew up and worked in the Soviet Union for decades and returned to

in 1956, three years after the death of

, or after 1991, when that empire collapsed.

Today they are old men and women who receive aid divided into two (one part is paid by Spain and the other by Russia) thanks to a 1996 agreement between the two countries.

These are pensions that Russia pays in quarters and that

.

That is, between 150 and 250 euros per month.

Everything was going well until February 25, a day after

dropped the first bomb against Ukraine.

In the CFSP DECISION 2022/327, the

enacted a series of

, among which was the following: "It is prohibited to accept deposits from Russian nationals or from natural persons residing in Russia or from legal persons, entities or bodies established in that country , if the total value of the deposits is greater than 100,000 EUROS".

Some banks, such as

or

, understood that pensions were not included in the sanctions and did not interrupt payments.

But others, such as

or

, argued that the money is issued by a Russian public body (the Russian

) and that this transfer is prohibited by the sanctions, for which they claimed to have returned the amounts to

.

The sisters

and

are the best example of this national banking squint.

They were also on the ship that left Gijón that night in 1937, they lived in the USSR and returned to Spain many years later.

Beatriz has her pension domiciled in Santander and is collecting it.

Adela has her pension domiciled in Unicaja and has not received it.

Adela is

, lives in a residence in Gijón and only an advanced cognitive deterioration protects her from this disturbing part of the present.

Her past began early, at age 9, when she embarked with her brothers Beatriz and

.

The boy falsified his age to enlist in the militias that defended

from the

but died in the battle of the city.

He was 15 years old.

After World War II, Adela overcame

, studied

and worked in a bank in Russia.

And in 1957 she returned to Spain, where she was a telephone operator, administrative and personnel manager at a

in Gijón until her retirement.

"Some banks have entered the transfer and others have not. Pensions are clearly an exception to the sanctions. I doubt that

, of 450 euros per quarter, will exceed 100,000 euros at some point. So I have only I asked Unicaja to comply with the law and apply the sanctions. But not to my aunt, but to whom it may concern. Fortunately, just yesterday [Thursday, September 22] the Gijón branch informed me that it finally authorized the payment."

This is

, daughter of Beatriz and niece of Adela, for whom she has been fighting since spring at the Unicaja offices.

Questioned the day before yesterday by EL MUNDO, Unicaja explains that last June it received the transfer from the Russian Pension Fund through a

and, "in compliance with the regulations", blocked the operations received and transferred a query "to the competent authority".

The answer to that query arrived "at the end" of last week and only then has the payment of pending pensions been authorized.

"The income of the money should take place in a matter of days. Our procedure responds to regulatory compliance."

Both the Russian and Spanish authorities have been aware of this problem for months.

On June 22, the

informed an affected party that on May 30 it transferred the second-quarter pension to his CaixaBank account, but that the bank returned the money to the Fund, indicating "Internal Policy" as the cause.

On August 9, the

informed another affected party that what counts is the CFSP DECISION and that those interested "must evaluate" whether to take other measures.

And, before, on July 15, the

had said that the War Children could continue to collect their pensions.

Adela Cuesta, this spring in Gijón, and with her siblings as a child (her on the right).FAMILY ARCHIVE

But the pensioners have been one or two quarters without receiving payment and, as of September 23, they have not yet received the money from the third, which will probably be paid to them in the coming days.

Engineer

is the president of the

, a group that began detecting the problem in April and also alerted the

.

"The Russian Pension Fund tells us that it has always sent the money. We have continued to go to the banks every week and they do not give us clear answers: some that it is because of the sanctions, others that Russia did not send the money... CaixaBank has presented some apologies. And it seems that just yesterday Unicaja said that it is going to unblock the payments".

Tatiana is the recent widow of

, an Asturian War Child who died in March.

Like the other Tatiana in this story, she is a Russian from Asturias, a Baltic with an accent, who has already spoken with the

.

"The Deputy Minister of Justice told us that she is going to study the case. They say they are looking for banks in Russia that are not sanctioned and banks in Spain that accept transfers."

The Russian Pension Fund reports that of the

, 37 have not been able to receive them so far this year, although it does not specify if it is only in Spain.

Tatiana Velázquez Stavinova, like members of the Association such as

or

, calculates that the problem has so far affected

.

"Imagine how they care about and influence their health. Every morning they call us asking."

-Hey, Miguelín, did the money arrive?

-No,

.

But don't worry, we're on it.

Honorina has her pension domiciled in CaixaBank and is aware of the matter, because her son Miguel does not stop in his aspiration for justice.

"The system forces us to collect the pension through a bank, we can no longer have the money in a sock. So the banks have a social responsibility. And here

. It is aberrational. It is not the

; nor the Ministry of Economy, which says that pensioners should be paid, but does not even make a statement; nor the Bank of Spain, which says that they are private entities and washes its hands. It is not a judicial decision, nor a political . It is an arbitrary decision of the banks. And

."

His name is

, historical correspondent for the Efe agency in Moscow and journalist of so many things in half the world.

Together with his brother, he has been arguing with CaixaBank for months.

He says that, after the first silences, the director of the branch in the neighborhood where her mother lives tried to find out what was happening and give them a solution.

But the lockdown has continued until now.

"The least that CaixaBank can do is go to its correspondent bank and demand that it send the money that CaixaBank itself returned on May 25 and that never arrived in Moscow to transfer it to those affected, in this case, my mother. We have requested that change the transfer from dollars to euros, because otherwise it will not arrive".

CaixaBank explained yesterday to EL MUNDO that there is no blockage on its part and that the obstacle is found in the

.

The Spanish bank hopes that the situation will be redirected in the coming weeks.

"We have confirmation from

that we will receive these transfers in the coming days, but they have not specified the exact date."

Miguel Bas does offer dates: "The Russian Pension Fund sent the money for the third quarter yesterday. I hope that it will be collected quickly. But the day before yesterday, the Fund confirmed that CaixaBank did not return the money for the second quarter, so, in the best In all cases, my mother will receive the money for the entire first semester of 2022 in January 2023".

Then Honorina will enter her 98th year of life, the same one that gave a brutal somersault on September 23, 1937...

... Exactly 85 years ago today.

That night, thousands of children of republicans arrived at the Port of El Musel and boarded the

, a freighter that was to evacuate them to

for later destination to the Soviet Union aboard the

.

Honorina Fernández was 12 years old, her sister 7 and her brother 5. In Leningrad they lived with thousands of children, studied in Spanish, but World War II broke out and they were transferred to the

.

When they went down to the river for water they saw the flashes of the bombs from the

...

Honorina was studying

when the war brought her the first wounded, a swarm of burned tankers, men in pieces, wails and stench.

After the war, she studied

in Moscow and was assigned to the

.

There she married

, a Spanish engineer.

They went to live in

, where Miguel was born and Honorina worked with

.

She later returned to Moscow and added years as a

.

In 1961, the

needed doctors.

And Honorina crossed the Earth to work for eight years as a doctor on the island.

She returned to the Soviet Union and continued to dole out health, a vocation that included treating the victims of

.

And in November 1991, a month before the USSR ceased to be those four capital letters, Honorina and Vicente returned to Spain.

-Do you remember your life in Russia?

-Of course!

Memory is taken away from me by

, not the years.

It was a wonderful time.

Hard things happened, though... Those wounded soldiers... Do you know what one of them said to me?

-No.

Tell me, Honorine.

-I was almost a girl and I had to heal a tremendous wound.

The soldiers covered the bleeding with straw, newspapers or their shirts and I was removing all that to cure them.

I was embarrassed to have to see that soldier naked and then he told me:

.

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