Book presentation: War and exile. Memories of a Catalan doctor in republican military health (1936-1942), by Pelai Vidal Canales

Book presentation: War and exile. Memories of a Catalan doctor in republican military health (1936-1942), by Pelai Vidal Canales

At the MUME, on Saturday, September 21, 2019, at 12 noon

The Civil War is often understood as a prelude to World War II. The internal situation in Spain and the intervention of different European powers provoked an intense and cruel conflict that ended with the exile of more than 400,000 people.

Pelai Vilar Canales (Ovideo, 1909 - Mexico City. 1993), son of a doctor and a teacher, graduated as a doctor in 1934. During the war he enlisted as a military health doctor in the Republican Army and participated in various scenarios and fronts of the Civil War, such as the beginning of the war, in the hospital ship Marqués de Comillas, which sent the Republican Army to Mallorca and then to the fronts of Madrid, Aragon and Catalonia. In 1939 he went into exile in Prats de Molló and was interned for almost two years in the concentration camps of Agde and Argelers, where he continued his medical work. After passing through Marseille (La Reynarde and Montgrand), Vilar arrived in Mexico in 1942, from France, thanks to the intervention of President Cárdenas and Mexican diplomacy in France, and worked as an Otolaryngologist in Pachuca (Hidalgo, Mexico) until 1959. His family reunited with him in Mexico in 1949.

The presentation will feature the participation of the author's son, Dr. Pelai Vilar Puig (Barcelona, ​​1937), compiler of the autobiographical texts of the book and also a doctor, otolaryngologist and retired professor of medicine in Mexico, and Dr. Carlos Viesca Treviño, author of the prologue, from the Department of History and Philosophy of Medicine of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

This book was published in Mexico by the Ateneo Español de México in 2018. It is the result of a compilation of autobiographical texts by Pelai Vilar Canales, originally written in Catalan, and selected by his son, Pelai Vilar Puig. It represents an example of "little history", in the sense of highlighting more or less anonymous witnesses, but no less representative, and also the recovery and homage of a witness linked to military health but also of all people who fought and risked their lives for their ideals of freedom, justice and social progress.

More information at:

Biografia Pelai Vilar Canales (Viquipèdia)

Biografia Pelai Vilar Puig (Viquipèdia)

Galeria de Metges catalans (Pelai Vilar Canales)