Presentation of the book: A voice of exile: The letters of the master Josep Vilalta (February 1939-April 1941)

Title:
Presentation of the book: A voice of exile: The letters of the master Josep Vilalta (February 1939-April 1941)
When:
Sat, 19. September 2020
Category:
Altres Activitats Històric EN

Description

Presentation of the book: A voice of exile: The letters of the master Josep Vilalta (February 1939-April 1941)

MUME, Saturday, September 19, 2020, at 12 noon

This is a collection of Josep Vilalta's letters written from exile in France to his wife, the teacher Maria Florensa, who was also on French soil: he, in concentration camps (St. Cebrià i Gurs) and camps work (Saint Médard-en-Jalles, Fourtou and Moux); and she, first in a residence in Lourdes with other refugees and later in Pau.

The presentation will be given by Salomó Marquès, editor, coordinator of the publication and author of the introductory study, and Maria Antònia Vilalta, daughter of Josep Vilalta and Maria Florensa.

The epistolary collection of the Vilalta-Florensa marriage is preserved in the MUME.

Josep Vilalta Pont was born on September 22, 1904 in Les Oluges, in the region of La Segarra. He studied the baccalaureate at the Institut de Lleida and the teaching career at the Escola Normal de Lleida as a free student. He finished his studies in September 1925, validating some subjects and, later, he extended his studies taking advantage of the proposals made during the Republic. He was a teacher in 1931. He worked as a teacher in different schools: Tàrrega (Urgell), Tarroja (Segarra), Seu d'Urgell (Alt Urgell), Torreserona (Segrià) and, already during the war years, in the Schools of the Board, in Barcelona, ​​and in Cervera (Segarra). From the pedagogical point of view he was a member of the Freinet Technical Cooperative. This movement, which encouraged learning through observation and experimentation and a critical spirit, was deeply rooted in the public teaching of the lands of Lleida. In addition to being a school principal, he held other positions of responsibility in teaching: Territorial Delegate for 1st Education in the 9th Region, in the northern counties of Lleida.

He served in the PSUC (Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya) and in the union of the FETE (Spanish Federation of Education Workers) attached to the UGT (General Union of Workers). He was secretary of this union in the counties of Lleida. On June 5, 1937, he married, in Lleida, Maria Florensa Tudela, daughter of Vilanova de Bellpuig (Pla d’Urgell, Lleida) and born in 1911, who was also a teacher. She had studied at the Normal de Lleida between 1930 and 1934. She worked as a teacher at the Serradell school (Pallars Jussà). He was also a member of the FETE.

Like so many other Republican masters, he will go into exile because of the victory of the rebels who rose up against the government of the Republic. It will pass to France on February 7, 1939 through La Jonquera and El Portús. While his wife was a refugee in Pau (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) he made a journey through different concentration camps, such as Sant Cebrià (Roussillon) and Gurs (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) and the Companies of Foreign Workers, in Sant Médard en Jalles ( Gironde). We know the route to exile thanks to the diary he wrote from 1939-1941. On June 7, 1940, he was transferred to the camp of Algiers (Roussillon) on his way to the camp of Bram (Aude) where he will teach at the camp school. On the first of August he left the field and was taken to work in the forest of the mountain of Alaric, precisely in the Hermitage of Fourtou, near Moux, a village in the Aude department.

Throughout this journey he did not stop writing to his wife who was, at first, in a refugee women's residence in Lourdes (Hautes-Pyrénées) and then in Pau, at the home of a French teacher. In the letters, he not only explains personal issues, but also the atmosphere of the fields, the work, the information that arrives to go to Mexico or other countries, the aid they have from the sectors of the French renovating teaching as well as d international organizations such as the Quakers, information on the situation of relatives in Catalonia, etc. These letters kept by Maria Florensa are an exceptional, first-hand testimony that show the hardships and tensions of all kinds that Republican refugees suffered.

Established in Narbonne by the Vilalta Florensa couple, Josep worked as an assistant professor of Spanish at the Victor Hugo Institute. Like many of the exiled republicans, he took part in the acts against the Franco dictatorship and, also, in Catalan festivities and commemorations such as the tribute and festival of Pau Casals to Prada, tributes to Pompeu Fabra, etc. He was a member and active member of the Casal de Catalunya in Narbonne and became its secretary.

From the beginning of his exile he corresponded with fellow teachers and with the sister teachers and pedagogues Pepita and Elisa Uriz, two important communist activists, while they were in France and also when they left for other countries (Germany, Mexico). , etc.).

Although his exile was only French, unlike other comrades who left France for other countries, there is documentary evidence that throughout the early 1940s he became interested in going to Mexico and in Venezuela. In fact, on February 24, 1941, the Mexican consulate in France sent him acceptance to emigrate to Mexico.

He suffered from Alzheimer's disease in 1980. He died in Narbonne on January 27, 1987. His wife, Maria Florensa, survived him until August 2007.

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