Hilda Farfante: “The Transition to Democracy betrayed us. It made a dirty trick to victims”

Hilda Farfante (Cangas del Narcea, Asturies, 1931) is the daughter of Republican teachers killed in 1936.
Hilda Farfante (Cangas del Narcea, Asturies, 1931) is the daughter of Republican teachers killed in 1936.
Interviews
(22/12/2014)

Hilda Farfante (Cangas del Narcea, 1931) lost her parents when she was five. They were Republican teachers. Her mother, Balbina Gayo Gutiérrez, was arrested on 9 September 1936 by Francoist troops when she was opening the school she headed. The school was located in Cangas del Narcea, in Asturias, northern Spain. His father, Ceferino Farfante Rodríguez, worked at the same school. He was arrested the next day, when he went to the barracks asking for his wife. That day they were both killed. The body of her mother was tossed into a ditch and the body of his father was thrown away in a ravine. They are missing. They left three young girls who were separated; each one lived with a different relative. From that moment, Hildaʼs aunt Guillermina, who was also a teacher, looked after her. When she was nine, she helped her in class. Hilda holds a degree in Education and she has been teacher and head teacher.

Hilda had to bear fear and the need to hide her story since she was a child. After a 65-year silence, she devotes her life to the recovery of historical memory. She asks for justice for those who were killed in the Spanish Civil War and during Francoʼs dictatorship. “A public recognition is needed, or at least a recognition of what happened”, she claims. Her testimony is included in the documentary film Las maestras de la República, directed by Pilar López Solano. The film, which received the Goya Award for the best documentary in 2013, remembers and honours the legacy that Republican teachers left in education, which is still valid. On 19 November, Hilda visited the University of Barcelona; she presented the film and explained her experiences on a colloquium included in the series Solidarity, Cinema and Memory, organised by the UB Solidarity Foundation.

 

Hilda Farfante (Cangas del Narcea, Asturies, 1931) is the daughter of Republican teachers killed in 1936.
Hilda Farfante (Cangas del Narcea, Asturies, 1931) is the daughter of Republican teachers killed in 1936.
Interviews
22/12/2014

Hilda Farfante (Cangas del Narcea, 1931) lost her parents when she was five. They were Republican teachers. Her mother, Balbina Gayo Gutiérrez, was arrested on 9 September 1936 by Francoist troops when she was opening the school she headed. The school was located in Cangas del Narcea, in Asturias, northern Spain. His father, Ceferino Farfante Rodríguez, worked at the same school. He was arrested the next day, when he went to the barracks asking for his wife. That day they were both killed. The body of her mother was tossed into a ditch and the body of his father was thrown away in a ravine. They are missing. They left three young girls who were separated; each one lived with a different relative. From that moment, Hildaʼs aunt Guillermina, who was also a teacher, looked after her. When she was nine, she helped her in class. Hilda holds a degree in Education and she has been teacher and head teacher.

Hilda had to bear fear and the need to hide her story since she was a child. After a 65-year silence, she devotes her life to the recovery of historical memory. She asks for justice for those who were killed in the Spanish Civil War and during Francoʼs dictatorship. “A public recognition is needed, or at least a recognition of what happened”, she claims. Her testimony is included in the documentary film Las maestras de la República, directed by Pilar López Solano. The film, which received the Goya Award for the best documentary in 2013, remembers and honours the legacy that Republican teachers left in education, which is still valid. On 19 November, Hilda visited the University of Barcelona; she presented the film and explained her experiences on a colloquium included in the series Solidarity, Cinema and Memory, organised by the UB Solidarity Foundation.

 

The Spanish Second Republic was committed to education and the emancipation of women. Your mother, for example, was a head teacher, something that was unthinkable years ago.

I think about her so much. She achieved too many things in 35 years, even if she came from a very humble family. In a moment in which women were not even able to cut their hair, my mother got everything: she was independent, she studied at the university, she married the man she loved, she worked and she became the head teacher of a school. At that time, it was very difficult for a woman to tell men what to do, and she got it. Moreover, she taught not only boys and girls, but also men and women.

A photograph of my mother giving lessons to adults comes to my mind. She was knitting with my sister Berta; the rest of women in the picture were also with their seven or eight year children. She allowed women to bring their children into class; otherwise, they were not able to come. On the other side of the photo, there is a note in which my mother explains that, in order to convince women to come to school to learn how to read and write, first it was necessary to teach them how to knit booties. My mother always combined housework, family and work. She was never excused from her work. In fact, she was killed because she opened the school.

 

People like your parents were responsible for a real change in the education system. What were the most important achievements at that time?

My parents did not support any political party, but they achieved many things, their projects modernized education… However, it did not last long and they paid dearly for it! When my mother was head teacher, a Centre for Educative Collaboration was created; the Council of Cangas del Narcea was big and it gathered more than one hundred teachers from small villages. They met once a month and they organised an Education Week in July 1935. They also created many school services: the canteen, the library, etc. I always say that, when I was a teacher and a head teacher in Madrid, it took me more than forty years to organise again a meeting of teachers. 

 

The Civil War ruined everything. Your parents were killed. Why did you decide to devote yourself to teaching, after all?

I do not remember me getting in the school because, in fact, I have never been out of it. I was born in a rural school; we lived upstairs and my parentsʼ classrooms were downstairs; then, the horror happened. I was five. After that, I lived with my aunt Guillermina, who was a teacher too. As she was so observed, she was right to choose pre-primary classrooms to avoid possible problems. I helped her in her lessons when I was nine. 

 

How was your job as a teacher during Francoʼs dictatorship?

As a student, I had to put up with the school of the national catholicism. How was that school? Well, I did not know any other. Then, as time goes by, you realize that it was an indoctrination school. They did not teach us to think or discuss. In short, they did not teach us anything.

As a teacher, I have always been very enthusiastic, I love school. However, during the forty-year dictatorship, education rested on a true desert. We were so afraid of speaking… I remember that I went on with a workmate. We spent nearly two years working door to door, we were together during playground time, we spoke about children, baby bottles, etc. One day, I heard the head teacher saying: “I was a head teacher in the coalfield, in Asturias, and nearly all my students were orphans; their parents were killed for being Republican. What a shower!”. At that moment, I was pregnant. So, I pretended to feel sick and I went out. I needed to scream. My mate went out after me and asked me what happened. I explained her why I could not hear that. I told her that my parents were killed. She confessed me that her father —who was a teacher— and her two brothers —aged 26 and 27— were killed too. We had to face five deaths, we had spent two years working together and we had not told that one to each other. Silence and more silence. What can be constructed over silence and lie? Anything except junk.

 

Franco dies in 1975, but changes are not immediate. You explain that one of your greatest achievements was not to sing Cara al sol (the official hymn of the dictatorship) at the school you managed in Madrid… and that was in 1981!

Yes, it was the school Escuelas Aguirre, a very old institution which was the first school created in Madrid for poor girls. It belonged to the city council, it was not national. This meant that not all the teachers who passed an examination could work there; posts were handed out by the city council. The first time I proposed to celebrate Carnival, in 1980, a teacher went into class with her students, closed blinds and began to pray the rosary because the rest of us were dressed up at the playground with the children, having fun. They were pro-Franco and they will continue being it. When a person does not want to know, that person does not know.

 

Nowadays, we are facing severe cuts in public funding that endanger the work developed by Republican teachers and their defence of public education. Do you think that we have gone back in the last years?

The transition from the Republican school to the one of the dictatorship was horrible, it was a terrible recession. Luckily, we have recovered from it little by little. Despite bad results reported by international assessments, I do not consider that school is doing it so bad. However, cuts are making it difficult; it is a shame. Look: the pin wore by people who support public education says: “School of everyone and for everyone”; my mother might have worn it too. Nowadays, we continue fighting for what Republican teachers defended. Public education needs funds and support, not hindrances. Without education there is not democracy, so we must defend it. 

 

After a 65-year silence, you are actively working on the recovery of historical memory and you claim for clarifying the crimes committed by Francoʼs dictatorship.

The Transition to Democracy betrayed us. It made a dirty trick to victims. I have spent fifteen years shouting for explaining my parentsʼ lives, for making them visible. Their story must be told. We cannot turn the page as if nothing happened; we cannot allow it. My friend Marisa Peña wrote me a beautiful verse: “Mientras que yo tenga voz, hablaré de mis muertos. Mientras que yo tenga voz, no han de callar mis muertos”. We must continue talking about those who died. We must not cry, we must speak and tell their stories.

Unfortunately, Francoist Spain has never left; it continues ruling everything. It is disgraceful that we are the second country in the world, after Cambodia, with the highest number of common graves. Young people must know it. Real truth must be known. We have an unfinished business with history, with ourselves and with deaths. We cannot go back.

 

Do you think that historical memory will be recovered?

Yes. This trip to Barcelona has given me hopes. There is a collective feeling that considers necessary to solve all that, and I think that it will be done. For many years, I have shouted for making public this ignominy, for not forgetting it, for sentencing it... As Saramago said: “We are the memory we have and the responsibility we assume. Without memory we do not exist, without responsibility maybe we do not deserve to exist”. That has led me to this point and I am happy.