A Spaniard in the Pantheon.
A republican, a communist, a fighter in the Civil War, a resister against the Nazis.
This Wednesday Celestino Alfonso will become the first citizen of this nationality to
enter
the secular temple of French glories.
It is written
in
italics, because physically his remains will remain in the Ivry cemetery, south of Paris.
But his name will be inscribed, along with 22 other members of a Resistance group against the German occupation of France, at the entrance to the crypt where the leader of the group, the Armenian Missak Manouchian, and his wife, Mélinée, will rest eternally in the same place as Voltaire, Rousseau or Victor Hugo.
France, at the initiative of President Emmanuel Macron, will settle a debt with foreigners who gave their blood for a country that did not always treat them as it should.
Manouchian, Alfonso and other comrades—stateless Jews, Armenians, Poles, Hungarians, Italians, Romanians...—were the protagonists of one of the tragic and heroic moments of World War II.
“Celestino's last letter... every kid in France would have to read it one day.
There is a lot to learn,” says the French Hispanist Jean-Claude Rabaté.
“Through Celestino, all Spanish republicans and resisters will enter the Pantheon.”
The Elysée Palace speaks of a “physical entry” into the Pantheon: that of Missak and Mélinée.
And another “symbolic entry”: that of Alfonso and the others, which “has the same value: entry and inscription in the Pantheon.”
Propaganda poster made by the German propaganda services in France during the Occupation.
"Liberators? Liberation by the army of crime!"
Celestino Alfonso appears on the poster along with his comrades-in-arms.
In November 1943, the French police, complicit with the Germans, dismantled the Manouchian network.
On February 21, 1944, its members were executed in the Mont Valérien fortification, today a memorial to the Resistance.
The Nazis published a pamphlet with a red background and photos of attacks that read: “Liberators?
Liberation through the army of crime!”
Thus they became known as the
L'affiche rouge
group , or the red poster.
“Alphonse.
Spanish.
Red.
“Seven attacks”
The poster, distributed a few days before the execution, showed the faces of 10 of the detainees, and a short explanation.
One of them said: “Alfonso.
Spanish.
Red.
“Seven attacks.”
Information about Celestino Alfonso was scarce for a long time, beyond the family circle and scattered mentions in books about Manouchian and the
Red Poster.
It was known that he had been born in 1916 in Ituero de Ibaza, near Ciudad Rodrigo, in the province of Salamanca.
That his family, with him, emigrated to France a few years later and that he grew up on the outskirts of Paris.
That he was a carpenter by trade and in the 1930s he joined the communist youth.
It was also known that, in 1936, he returned to Spain to fight against the rebels.
That he returned to France at the end of the war and joined the FTPF-MOI (Snipers and Partisans-Immigrated Manpower).
That he participated in the attack against a leader of Nazi Germany in Paris, Julius Ritter.
That, after being arrested, a German military court tried him.
Celestino Alfonso was 27 years old when he was shot.
In a letter written in French a few hours before being murdered, and addressed to his family, he wrote: “Today at three o'clock I will be shot.
“I am nothing more than a soldier who dies for France.”
“I know why I die and I am proud,” he continues.
“My life has been a little short and I hope yours is longer.”
His granddaughter, Juana Alfonso, reads on the phone a second letter that she found among the papers of Juan, her father, Celestino's only son.
It is written in Spanish and addressed to his wife and son.
“I don't regret my past,” she tells them.
“If I had to start over, I would be the first.
I ask you for a lot of courage, that my son has a good education...".
Juana remembers how as a child her father, Celestino's son, listened to the song
L'affiche rouge
, by Léo Ferré, who set to music the verses of the communist poet Louis Aragon: “There were 23 when the rifles flourished, 23 who gave their hearts before time / 23 foreigners and our brothers nevertheless / 23 in love with life until they died / 23 who screamed France as they fell.”
Photograph provided by the family of Celestino Alfonso with a group of people in which he is not identified.
Juana Alfonso took a while to know exactly who her grandfather was and what he did.
Her father didn't remember much.
At Celestino's death, Juan was only two and a half years old, although he grew up with the painful memory of the fallen hero, both omnipresent and absent.
Juan was a psychiatric nurse by profession, “a bit of the hippy era,” his daughter reminds him.
She explains that he took her to the barricades in May '68. He was a painter and musician, too.
He died at 33, when she was five and a half.
“Very soon I found out that my father had died from the grief of his father's death,” says Juana.
Over the years, she reconstructed Celestino's story.
One of the survivors of the resistant group, Henri Karayan, once told him that, for him, Celestino “was the best, the most agile, the most brave.”
The writer Patrick Fort spent years researching to write the novel
Après nous
(After Us, not translated into Spanish), based on the life of Celestino Alfonso.
Among other testimonies, he collected that of Julien Lauprêtre, who as a young resister lived in the same cell as Manouchian, Alfonso and the other detainees.
“He told me that Celestino Alfonso impressed him,” says Fort.
“After the torture sessions, he would return to the cell, not in very good shape, and boost the morale of the rest.”
In Ivry there is a street dedicated to Celestino Alfonso.
Neither the family nor the experts consulted have any information that there is a plaque or other form of commemoration in Spain.
“In his town there is nothing, not a street, nothing,” laments the Hispanicist Rabaté.
"On the other hand, there is a street dedicated to Franco's general Moscardó."
In France, his name will forever be engraved in the Pantheon, whose frontispiece reads: “To great men, the recognition of the country.”
A
great man
, a hero
.
Undated passport photo of Cestino Alfonso provided by his family.
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