The ink trail to grave 28 of the Septfonds concentration camp

Jesús Fraile was 21 years old, had a girlfriend named Florinda and 29 documents and objects in his pockets on April 7, 1939, when he died of typhus in the Septfonds concentration camp hospital (France).

They appeared along with the belongings of 41 other men, in 2013, in an old wooden ballot box abandoned in an attic of that town's Town Hall.

“They didn't know what to do with it,” explains archivist and history professor Philippe Guillén, son and grandson of Spanish refugees, “and they called me.”

More information

The tribute in cartoons by Paco Roca to those who were retaliated against by Franco's regime

Guillén examined the objects, more than 500, cataloged them, treated them so that they would not deteriorate further.

He proudly calls this entire process “the mission.”

He was especially moved by one of them – “a lipstick, the last gift that one of those men had received from his girlfriend” – and published the graphic novel

A Spanish Republican: Dead at 20

(Alda Talent), which summarizes the story. of all the owners of the small treasures he had in his hands.

The comic includes a list of the Spanish prisoners killed in the camp and the findings in the ballot box to try to locate their families.

One of them, that of Jesús Fraile, has already appeared: last Saturday he visited his grave.

Image from the comic 'A Respañol Republican Dead at 20', by Philippe Guillén

“For us,” explains David Fraile, Jesús' grandnephew, “it was the story of the uncle who died in the war.

My grandmother told it to me when I was in high school and my father when I had finished college.

She made him very sad.

In 2020 she died of covid, alone in a hospital, like Jesús Fraile.

And I decided, with my brother, to start investigating: look for documents, scan old photographs... try to find out more.

We contacted Philippe, who has done a magnificent job and, finally, we traveled to France.”

David Fraile and his partner undo the last steps of Jesús Fraile, they try to put themselves in his place.

“He tried to meet Florinda at the Mataró station, they were both there the same day, but they did not meet.

In a letter, Florida says that she went to look for him at Septfonds, but Jesus had arrived in such bad condition that he died shortly after.

Specifically, at 22 days: he entered the camp on March 17, 1939 and died on April 7.

His girlfriend then writes to Jesús' family to inform them of "the damn misfortune" of the death of "what he loved most in this world."

“In that letter,” David relates, “she almost introduced herself, because she had met Jesus in the war and they did not know about her.

But my grandmother asked her to go to the town, to Maranchón [Guadalajara] and out of grief or for therapy... She stayed to live with them.

My father, who barely met Jesus, grew up with her.

He was like his aunt.”

Among the objects recovered in the ballot box, there are several photographs dedicated to Florinda: “With all my heart, so that you can look at me when I am not by your side,” she writes in one of them.

“They were,” David remembers, “in a little bag with a black bow wrapped around it, as if it were a gift.

It was very exciting to see and be able to touch my ancestor's things.

There was also a small photo with my father, who was one year old, and his brother, with him.

They gave us the option of keeping the objects, but where they are now [in the Tarn-et Garonne archives] more people can see them and I think they are everyone's heritage because my uncle's is the story of so many others who, because of the war, they died just when they were beginning to live, as Philippe's comic recalls.”

Guillén agrees: “I have read many history books.

I have written history books, but this is different.

It's something physical, that it smells, that you can touch, that's why it's so exciting.

They are emblematic objects that tell the exile of the Republicans, the conditions in which they were welcomed by France and that is also the story of my own family.

One of the photographs found in that old ballot box made me cry because it was from the same place where my father was born;

In another, a young soldier appeared swimming in a river, the same one my family taught me the first time I went to Spain and where my uncle told me: 'Here we learned to swim.'

David Fraile, nephew of Jesús Fraile, visits his uncle's grave in Septfonds (France) last Saturday.

Philippe Guillen

David Fraile and his partner marched almost 85 years later, from the French station of Borredon, where thousands of Spaniards arrived fleeing Franco, to the Septfonds concentration camp and cemetery.

On the tour they met Carmen Negrín, granddaughter of the last head of Government of the Second Spanish Republic.

“Each one told us the story of his relatives and we tried to put ourselves in the shoes of all of them, just children, seeking refuge.

Then we stayed with Philippe in front of my great-uncle's grave, number 28. We placed a plaque that my partner made, some flowers in the colors of the Republic, and I spread my father's ashes on the stones.

“It was very, very exciting.”

“The Spaniards,” Guillén says, “were buried a few kilometers from the town because at that time the French did not want them to mix their graves with those of the Reds.”

Cesáreo Bustos Delgado, a survivor of Mauthausen, denounced the abandonment of the cemetery in the late 1970s – “because of the weeds and brambles it was impossible to pass through” – and mobilized the authorities to rehabilitate it.

Today there is a tree for each of the 81 deceased Spanish prisoners and a poem by Rafael Alberti on the door,

You did not fall,

which says: “You can hear your birth, your slow fatigue, your push again under the hard cover of the land that, by giving you the shape of an ear, feels its future youth in the flower of wheat.”

After merging the past and the present in the stones of Jesús Fraile's tomb, his great-nephew David accompanied the memory associations in a protest against the plans to install a pig farm in the vicinity of the former concentration camp.

Memory continues to be a battlefield.

Military ID of Jesús Fraile found in an old ballot box in Septfonds.

Looking for relatives of...

This is the list, reproduced in Philippe Guillén's comic, of the 81 Spaniards killed in the French concentration camp of Septfonds, as they appear in the record: Francisco Parraga Aleman;

Raimundo Carazo Andrés;

Joan Coll Quintana;

José Salvado Dolcet;

Leandro Ballestas Sarsa;

Carlos García Cerezo;

Salvador Sánchez Parra;

Domingo Bayarri Lucas;

José Gines Moles;

Antonio Calon Pons;

Antonio Morado Gallego;

José Gil Gimeno;

Germán Odriozola Ugarte;

Juan Roman Soto;

Francisco Pineda Pineda;

Santiago Castan Vaquero;

Joaquín Llin Roig;

Celestino Comes Safon;

José Sangra Plana;

José Bartoli Marigades;

Lluis Deseures Molas;

Manuel Armengol Bosch;

Pedro Abulina Oriol;

José Dauder Martínez;

José María Asin Usieto;

Antonio Vasquez Rojas;

Luis Rierra Torres;

Jesus Fraile;

Ricardo Fernand Martín;

Francisco Sáez Nadal;

Francisco Gallent Bonet;

Rafael Rins Blade;

Enrique Fabregas Pla;

Federico Soler Mateo;

Juan Mabras Torrents;

José María Mestres Font;

Antonio Noguera Tell;

Tomás Drago Tamarit;

José Vilaplana Esteve;

Ulpiano López Alonzo;

Enrique Antiga Balsells;

Cristóbal Díaz Rodríguez;

Juan Rubio Díaz;

Antonio Depalan Custey;

Jaime Coll Aragonés;

José Ramos López;

Pedro Bruy Pujals;

Antonio Marza Segui;

José Robert Vilaseca;

Daniel Soriano Laguna;

Daniel Bavet Orit;

Cecilio López Carroso;

Francisco Ortuño Avellan;

Ramón Parres Salas;

Miguel Uso Salvador;

Francisco Abellán García;

Pablo Sabanas Munio;

Pedro Adalid Millán;

Enrique Pérez Casains;

Valentín Pons Trullas;

Crescencio Payo Gómez;

Amadeo Ferrer Panisello;

Ramón Codo Brunet;

Pascual Uliaque Abenia;

Antonio Díaz Díaz;

José Espinosa Puig;

José Mortes Hernández;

Ignacio Loza Santodomingo;

Miguel Ferrer Pi;

José Cantelli Blanco;

Alfonso Gil Guzmán;

Diego Pérez Berrocal;

José Farré Solé;

Ramón Duch Llorens;

Pascual Almendro López;

Daniel González del Río;

Francisco Guzmán Arrabal;

Miguel Abos Serena;

Antonio Conessa Saura;

Jacques Matas Ruanez;

Luis Carraux Ruiz. 

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