People who suffered the miserable period after the Civil War remember how they desperately searched for food while there was little… or none.
“Destitute lines of people waiting for food from social aid, people dirty and with lice, children eating carob beans, fig bread, sweet potatoes…. People spoke in low tones so that the neighbor did not hear —something that I did not understand by my age—, but everyone was content to have left the hell of the war. At the age of eight I suffered the most possible for a child to suffer, and it has left its marks. Those times give me so much pain that I do not want to remember them. The postwar I can only think of as a distant thing because of how horrible it was.”
These are the words Francisca Díaz Ruano used to describe
When the Civil War came to an end on April 1, 1939 with the triumph of fascist general Francisco Franco’s Nationalist Army, much of
The Spanish infrastructure, including its transportation system of both railways and roads, was disorganized due to war damage. Farmers were unable to obtain much-needed fertilizer for the ancient Spanish earth, and as a result insects plagued the crops.
World War II proved a barrier to
According to an analysis by Grandizo Munis on
The poor flooded cities. While the more fortunate lived in apartments, or a floor of a house, many lived in corrales. Corrales, which were once used to house animals, consisted of a building with an open patio center, with a common kitchen and bathroom and many little square rooms where families made their homes. In such close quarters these people were forced to co-exist, and they shared everything, the good and the bad. Some neighbors fought with each other, while others saved their scraps for the elderly woman next store.
Spaniards who complained were severely punished. The Law of Political Responsibility enacted by Franco subjected all those who directly or indirectly collaborated with the “reds” to high penalties. A private denunciation was sufficient, and punishments could range from confiscation of property to 30 years in prison to death. Munis writes that according to French government sources, in February 1940 the monthly number of executions was 800.
Rosario Ceballos, who was a young girl during the 1940s, talks of how it was an everyday occurrence to find civil guards and soldiers, along with silence, on the streets. People dared not speak anything negative about the government for fear of being marked as a communist.
Angel L. de Quinta, whose parents were young children during the hunger years, recounts how once, when his father
Houses had no running water. People had to go and fetch water from faucets in the streets. During the hot months, when water was in greater demand, people would have to get up sometimes before dawn in order to beat the rush, or travel further than normal later in the day. They took baths in bins in the house, using natural soap and often reusing the water.
The ration of meat was set at 100 grams per person, but distribution was not weekly. Simple foods, such as bread, chickpeas, sugar, and olive oil were also rationed. Nothing was wasted. People saved even potato peels to fry for another meal.
Rosario Ceballos describes the process to obtain food. “To buy food we would use food stamps. Sometimes, however, when times were very hard, we would barter with things such as a can of condensed milk in order to buy food. Bread was rationed, and often people would collect their ration and then try reselling it to turn a profit…Selling contraband, while illegal, happened in an unbelievable multitude.”
“Daily meals for my family consisted of some bread and coffee for breakfast, a little portion of garbanzo beans or lentils for lunch, and then coffee and bread, if there was some left, for dinner. Milk was rare,” she adds.
José Martínez Ruiz, who was born in 1940, remembers how the hunger years demanded he become a delinquent at an early age. Because of the limited amount of available food, people were forced to steal, or else starve.
“I used to put on my father’s jacket, which was large on me and had room to hide things, and go to the stores to steal food such as apples, or whatever I could grab.”
Angel’s maternal grandfather Pepe worked as a ticket vendor at a
There is no hiding from the fact that the masses in
“People are eating and you cannot eat,” José says in an attempt to describe the hunger he experienced. “There would be people eating in a pastry store, and all I could do is watch and feel my mouth salivate because my father did not have money to pay.”
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