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The Generalitat and the TV channel Televisió de Catalunya have uncovered the history of Catalan exiles in a documentary series
On 7th November, the Generalitat government and Televisió de Catalunya will be presenting 'Exilis' (Exiles), a six-part documentary series recounting the experiences of the half a million exiles who fled from fascism in 1939, many of whom were never able to return to Catalonia.
The series will be launched on Wednesday 8th November at 9.35pm on TV3, in the form of a documentary on the drama of the flight of civilians and soldiers in the wake of Franco's victory and the time they spent in concentration camps in France. This series, which will then continue to be broadcast on channel 33 on Tuesday at 10pm, was granted funds by the Presidential Department's Support Programme for Catalan Communities Abroad (CCA) and the Institutional Relations and Participation Department's Democratic Memorial Programme.
As pointed out by the director of CCRTV, Joan Majó, the director of TVC, Francesc Escribano, and the director of Exilis, Felip Solé, this was an ambitious project that came into being eighteen months ago and was backed from the outset by the Generalitat's Catalan Communities Abroad Area, which at the time came under the Foreign Cooperation Secretariat, although it now comes under the Catalan Agency for Development Cooperation. Right from the start, various Catalan Communities Abroad all over the world contributed with their first-hand accounts and experiences of their exile. For that reason, the series devotes a special acknowledgement to them at the end of each part.
The documentary features well-known Catalans, such as Cristian Aguadé, son of the mayor of Barcelona at the time, and whom the Minister of the Presidential Department, Joaquim Nadal, met in person when seeking first-hand accounts of exile in Chile. However, as the director tells us, the series also shows, "the anonymous exiles, those who were never to return. Some because they died and others because they did not have the means to return: a terrible moral and physical wrench that they managed to tell us about". What most struck him, he says, was the fact that "what kept them going" was meeting up at Christmas and thinking that they would be back home in Catalonia once and for all the following year. But that day never came... in many cases, until the death of the dictator.
"We produce a portrait of a society following numerous paths over the seas, over borders... it is an episode about that little-known Catalonia that fought against international fascism, in a journey that, for many, has still not come to an end", Solé stresses.
The Mexican Consulate was chosen for the presentation of Exilis, this having been the first port of call and the champion of thousands of Catalan exiles. The Consul in Barcelona, Jaime García, contributed a striking testimony: a clock that the Consulate staff hurriedly stored away on the day when diplomatic relations with the victorious Franco were broken off and when the Consulate was closed. In the ensuing chaos, the clock stopped at two o'clock in the afternoon and has remained the same until now, bearing silent witness to the long dark times that Exilis is reliving so that they may never more return.
More information: The presentation of Exilis (pdf)
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