Joan Manuel Serrat and Baltasar Garzón with Estela de Carlotto during the tribute held this Monday at the residence of the Argentine ambassador in Madrid.INMA FLORES (EL PAIS)
A man plays the piano and sings to a woman who looks at him spellbound.
Her name is Estela de Carlotto, she is 91 years old and presides over the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo association, which searches for the children of those who disappeared during the Argentine dictatorship (1976-1983).
He was called Ignacio Hurban until 2014 when he learned that the couple who raised him were not his biological parents and that a woman had been looking for him all her life.
He is now Ignacio Montoya Carlotto, the 114th grandson who has been recovered by the Grandmothers of Playa de Mayo, the grandson of Estela de Carlotto.
The scene takes place in the residence of the Argentine ambassador to Spain who, together with the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI) and the Anne Frank Ibero-American Youth Network, has organized a tribute in Madrid to that woman who turned a white scarf into a universal symbol of perseverance.
In September 1977, during the Argentine dictatorship, the military kidnapped her 23-year-old daughter, Laura.
On August 25, 1979, they handed over her body to him.
A girl who had lived with her in her detention camp informed her that she had had a child while in captivity because when she was taken away, she was pregnant.
De Carlotto then began to meet with other women in the same situation as her.
"At first in houses, being very careful not to be followed."
Later, seeking visibility for her fight,
They began to go to the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires with other grandmothers who were looking for the children that the dictatorship had made disappear after murdering their parents.
They wore a white scarf on their heads.
They called them crazy.
"The first day my legs were shaking between the uniforms and the horses."
But they didn't give up.
This Thursday marks the 46th anniversary of Rafael Videla's coup in Argentina and De Carlotto is still searching: “We have found 130 grandchildren.
We are missing 300. It is impossible to rest″.
This Thursday marks the 46th anniversary of Rafael Videla's coup in Argentina and De Carlotto is still searching: “We have found 130 grandchildren.
We are missing 300. It is impossible to rest″.
This Thursday marks the 46th anniversary of Rafael Videla's coup in Argentina and De Carlotto is still searching: “We have found 130 grandchildren.
We are missing 300. It is impossible to rest″.
Ignacio Montoya Carlotto sings to his grandmother Estela during the tribute at the residence of the Argentine ambassador in Madrid.
INMA FLORES (THE COUNTRY)
“At night I cry, during the day I fight,” explains the president of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo before an emotional audience where, among others, the former judge of the National Court Baltasar Garzón, who opened a case in 1996 for the crimes of the Argentine dictatorship;
the Secretary of State for Democratic Memory, Fernando Martínez;
the actor Juan Diego Botto, son of one of those who disappeared after the coup, and the singer-songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat.
"But I have to give thanks to life," she continues, "because it's ugly to go through this world without doing anything and life allowed me to do something for others, leave something behind."
"Totalitarian Outbreaks"
De Carlotto recounted how, doing the opposite route to them, grandchildren of those who disappeared during the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship asked them one day for "advice to find the remains of their grandparents."
“They took the concept of fighting, organizing and demanding the State.
Thanks to them, many grandmothers in Spain have been able to bring flowers to their husbands because they finally knew where they were”.
The Secretary of State for Democratic Memory presented the president of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo as "a symbol for the Spanish democrats who fought against Francoism."
“In Argentina they are still looking for the disappeared and in Spain, sadly, too.
They still lie by the thousands in mass graves and roadside ditches,” she added.
Ricardo Alfonsín, Argentine ambassador to Spain, praised her courage: “Estela fought for human rights at a time when that meant facing the risk of death, disappearance and torture, and she did so without rancor, without feelings of revenge or hatred.
She was able to turn her pain into her cause, her tragedy into a flag.”
Mariano Jabonero, general secretary of the OEI, explained the importance of extending this example and instructing the youngest in human rights, "making an effort of democratic gymnastics."
Argentina has requested that the ESMA, a center of torture and murder during the dictatorship, now a museum, be recognized by UNESCO as "world heritage of memory."
The Argentine ambassador to Spain, Ricardo Alfonsín, hugs Estela de Carlotto during the tribute. INMA FLORES (EL PAIS)
Shortly before listening to his grandson at the piano, De Carlotto remembered the moment he knew he was finally going to meet him.
“Judge María Servini de Cubría called me.
She talked to me about other things and when she thought she was calm she told me: 'We have found him'.
I jumped up, hugged her and we cried together.
Then we met, we got to know each other... For me it's as if the aura of my daughter Laura returned.
I'm happy".
The couple who raised him worked in the fields, on a rich man's estate.
The child was registered as if he were a biological child.
Knowing his origins, when he was already 36 years old, he changed his surnames for those of his biological parents, but not his first name, Ignacio.
Laura, his mother, had called him Guido, after his father, who had been kidnapped a few months earlier.
De Carlotto paid a ransom for her husband and 25 days later he was returned to her, tortured, forever changed, but alive.
In other cases, the children of the victims of the Argentine dictatorship ended up in the houses of the executioners, which emotionally complicates the processes.
“I remember a reunion in a judge's office.
He told her: 'Ma'am, don't ask me to love you because I don't know you.'
She replied: 'I love you very much and I will wait for you'.
The second time I saw them, months later, thanks to the help of our psychologists, the grandson was hugging his grandmother.
And that hug gave us all strength.”
De Carlotto insists that it is a collective struggle, not a personal one, and that it is not Argentine either, but universal because there are still missing persons.
Spain is not saved from that”.
Only three grandmothers of the association remain active.
“But there is relief because now our grandchildren help us.
Many of them are looking for their brothers.
The day that none of us are here, they will continue”.
Estela de Carlotto chats with her grandson after the tribute. INMA FLORES (EL PAIS)