By Shannon Hartman

REINOSA -- Adoración Lasheras Gutierrez and other family members have kept the postcards and letters from her father, Jesús Lasheras, of the ones imploring his wife to find people to vouch for him while he was a prisoner of war.

“Victoria para salir en libertad necisi to que dos falanqistas me den una garana tia o dos personas de deredias pero esto tiene que ser abalado por los falanqistas iqual,”  he wrote on the postcard.

He died in a monastery serving as a prison in 1938 and his body was buried in a common grave.

Adoración Lasheras Gutierrez, born in 1921, was a teenager at the beginning of the civil war in 1936, living with her family in Santander, Spain. She was the oldest of four children and had a more or less comfortable lifestyle because her father worked in telephone services for the government. However, after the Nationalists’ coup, the Republican government put Mr. Lasheras to work in military support, again working in telephone services. But when the Nationalist forces took control over their area, Mr. Lasheras was taken prisoner and sent to a prison in Asturias, near Oviedo, in the northern coast of Spain, about 100 miles west of Santander. Here, he became extremely ill with pneumonia and was relocated to a monastery, serving as a prison with a hospital ward in Santander, where he died in 1938. His death left her mother, Victoria, as the sole caretaker of her family. Ms. Lasheras and her family struggled everyday to survive.She remembers having to work in the fields and she did whatever she could in order to find food for her family.

Times became even harder for the Lasheras family when Italian prisoners were placed in her home for six months during the war. In exchange for a decrease in prison time, these Italian prisoners agreed to go to Spain to construct a burial monument in Zaragoza for the Italians killed in the Spanish Civil War.  During the Italians’ stay, her family never spoke or associated with the prisoners. It is bad enough that there were the foreign strangers living in her home, but moreover, these strangers were criminals and prisoners of another country living in her home.

 “The Italians ate all of our food and stole our chickens,” Ms. Lasheras recalled.

During the Spanish Civil War, Italian foreign aid was of significant support for the Franco’s nationalist regime. Although Mussolini along with several other countries signed an agreement of Non-Intervention Treaty, the Italian government nonetheless provided the Nationalists with the "Corps of Volunteer Troops" of about 50,000 men. As many as 75,000 Italians ended up fighting in Spain. Italy also provided military supplies, such as cannons, guns, tanks, bombers, and assault planes. However, their greatest military influence was the Battle of Guadalajara, where they were defeated by the Republicans and lost over 300 men.  The Italian presence in Spain not only affected the battlefield, but the lives of some Spanish civilians, like that of the Lashera family.

 

Interview Excerpts from Adoración Lasheras Gutierrez, on July 28, 2009, Reiñosa, Espana

Transcript of Interview in Spanish, Quote 1:

“Mi madre que tenía ganado le llevaron las caballerías, las tropas pero no se recuperaron a si que un prejuicio bastante.  La casa donde vive Belén estuvo de cuartel primero con los Rojos y después con los Italianos y nosotros a un rincón.”

“¿Usted se acuerdan entonces los Italianos?”

                …“Si”

“¿ Nos puede contar un poco de eso?”

“Aunque estaban alojados en casa no teníamos relación con ellos. Con nosotros, fueron buenas personas y no puedo decir nada.”

            “¿Cuantos Italianos se quedaron allí?” 

“Hicieron un monumento o sea los Italianos vinieron hacer un monumento para recoger los presos, los caídos Italianos. Los Españoles no, los Italianos, un monumento que está en la cúspide que esta todavía que no le han quitado después, en que año ha sido? Cuando hubo una guerra hace tres o cuatro años llevaron los restos que había como estaban todos metidos en nichos los llevaran a Zaragoza. Ahí hubo un vecino de arriba de cerca de casa de Belén que estaba él para le pagaban los Italianos, la Embajada Italiana, para enseñar lo que era el monumento. Estaba hueco por dentro y estaba todo en nichos pequeños un poco más que esto así donde se metían las cajas. Y después los cogieron y los llevaron para Zaragoza y eso ya no se como esta.”

Not able to load player, check flash plugin

English Translation of Quote 1:

“My mother had cattle that the gentlemen took, but the troops did not recover them to us and that was a lot of damage. The house where Belen lives was the first headquarters with the Rojos, and later with the Italians, and we had to live in the corner.

“Then, the Italians were in agreement with you?”

 …“Yes”

“Will you tell us a bit more about that?”

“Although they were lodged in our home, we did not we have relations with them. With us, they were good people and I cannot say anything.”

“How long did the Italians stay there?”

“They made a monument, that is to say that the Italians lived here because they were making a monument to put the prisoners and the dead Italians. But not the Spaniards, the Italians, a monument that is in the peak that they still have not removed since that year had passed. It had been a war of three or four years, and they took the remainders that were there and they were all put in niches and they carried them to Zaragoza. There was an upstairs neighbor of a house near Belen, who was paid by the Italian Embassy to teach them about the monument. It was hollow inside and there were small niches a little bigger than this where the boxes were put. And after they captured them, they took them to Zaragoza and I don’t know what happened after that.”