Felipe had always been an active man. Despite his age, every day he walked a good distance. When he lived in Havana, he would walk to the port with his box of watercolors to paint. He also took a book and a notebook to read and write. However, as the years went by, he started to cut out moments of domestic stillness. After his morning walk, he would sit in the garden where he felt at ease, sometimes reading and other times contemplating the plants and trees.
One morning, he closed his eyes and remembered the day he and Olivia went to the Bonanza estate for the first time. The two stood paralyzed looking at the façade of what was going to be their house. The iron gate was dilapidated, the garden destroyed and full of weeds. The road that led to the door of the house was completely muddy and covered with fallen trees which they had to move aside to get through. Some woody stems were rotten, others dry, and the few that remained standing were smothered by the vigorous vines that climbed around the bark, fighting to gain the upper hand. Only crumbled walls remained of the stables and corrals. It was difficult for them to open the door of the house that had been dislocated by the blows of the Spanish soldiers looking for independentists. The hallway smelled of humidity and when they entered the living room and the rooms on the ground floor, they realized that everything was in ruins: the window glass was broken, the door hinges were creaking, the walls were chipped and stained with moisture, the furniture piled up, the upholstery dingy and the fireplaces blackened by countless layers of soot. The stairs were missing steps, the roof of the bedrooms had collapsed in some places and the few pieces of furniture that remained were damaged.
When Felipe opened his eyes again that day, after contemplating the bushes and trees that Olivia and the gardener had planted, he got up to hug the walnut tree. Then he picked up a sprig of rosemary, put it to his nose and smelling it he said to himself, “Why are humans so distracted and we don’t stop to look, smell, and touch the good things we have?” Closing his eyes and hugging the trees was a game he played as a child with his father. Sometimes one of the farm's cats would come up to him and he would pet it. The first time Mariano saw him with a cat on his lap, he told him, “I can't believe it. You never petted the cats, you kicked them out!’
"Wisdom comes with age,” Felipe commented smiling.
Olivia also enjoyed her home, but she had been strange for several months. She was losing her memory of the recent past. She started forgetting chores in the kitchen and the names of things. She no longer knew the name of the postman, the shopkeeper or who the town doctor was. When she realized her mistakes, she became angry with herself. Her sweet character turned sour. One day she begged Felipe, “Help me get out of here, I want to go home.”
“Olivia, this is your home! Where do you want to go?”
“They're spying on me.”
“Come here, by my side, I will protect you. You have created this garden from scratch. Those trees are ours, hug them.”
Olivia wrapped her arms around a tree and little by little she calmed down.
“I was planning to go to the Esperanza farm to bring them bananas and avocados. Will you come with me?”
“Yes, I want to get out of here,” she told him.
“Let's walk, if you feel like it. Or maybe you prefer to go by car?”
“Better walking. Wait for me, I'm going to look for my straw hat.”
Since the first symptoms of Olivia's illness, Felipe tried to take her for a walk every morning and in the evening he dictated pieces of a story for her to write. Every night, he also read aloud to her a chapter from one of her favorite novels. Often in the afternoons, after a nap, when Olivia opened the sewing box and sat on the patio to mend socks and tights, Felipe would leave the house again. He left his wife with Fausta, an old mulatto woman, a war widow, whom they had given shelter in their house in Havana. She was very affectionate with Olivia and got along well with the other workers on the farm. They had never had servants, but since they lived in the country, they hired a gardener and a cook who also took care of the cleaning.
Felipe would have liked Mariano to go out more. Since he turned eighty, he noticed that he was a little sad, he had lost his enthusiasm for the Catalan social gatherings, and had less interest in politics which is why he was going to pick him up by car. He would take him for a ride and on the way back he would invite him to have a snack at the Bonanza estate, so that Olivia would see him more often and not forget about him.
Mariano let his friend take him for a walk, and enjoyed the relaxed sitting on the patio of the Bonanza estate. The cook always served them a cup of coffee with pastries and a tray of fruit, but he preferred lemonade with sugar.
“Come on, Olivia. Go get Mariano some lemonade.”
Olivia brought them a pitcher of lemonade and sat down with them again.
“What are you telling me today, Olivia?” Mariano asked her.
She began to ramble on about very distant events, carefully remembering anecdotes from her childhood in the plantation barracks. However, she often repeated the same things.
One afternoon when Olivia was busy collecting the clothes hanging in the sun, she said to the two men, “My Aunt Paca told me that there is a curse on the women.”
“What women?”
“The owner of the mill and her three daughters.”
“What curse are you talking about?”
“Their cruelty and meanness towards the black slaves will make their hair fall out and they will go bald,” Olivia said.
“Your Aunt Paca was right - they were evil women. Your aunt sang very well, right? Come on Olivia, tell us about your aunt,” said Felipe.
“I want to go to the barracks!”
“Olivia, your aunt is no longer at the sugar mill. Now we all live here, this is our house. Do you want me to help you fold the clothes?”
“No, I'm done, now I'm going to give it to . . .” She stayed silent for a few seconds, searching for Fausta's name in her head. “. . . to that woman, so she can help me iron it.”
After a few minutes, they heard Olivia singing and they looked at each other, happy that she was humming a song from her childhood.
Then the two friends heard Fausta's loving voice saying to Olivia, “My Olivia, let's finish the clothes and put them in their place. Can you help me?”
Felipe turned on the radio and the news began reporting on the combat of the first bloody battle of the Spanish Civil War, the Battle of Irun. The two remained silent for a long time, paying attention to the radio and thinking about how terrible the fights were from house to house, killing brothers and neighbors. At the end of the news, Felipe turned off the radio and said, “The Popular Front is a very heterogeneous left-wing coalition, as it brings together parties with very different approaches: Republicans, social democrats, liberals, socialists, communists and anarchists. They all share the anti-fascist spirit, but you see, the most radical parties and the conservatives are starting to throw plates at each other's heads, like in a marriage.”
“The only thing missing would be if, due to the disagreements between the parties on the Red side, the Nationals won the war. It would be a disaster,” Mariano answered worriedly.
“You already know that I like to joke. However, speaking seriously, I have to tell you that I fear for the disagreements of the Reds, but now what worries me most is the support that Germany and Italy are giving to the Nationals.”
“Don't say that Felipe. I hope the aid that the Reds receive from the Soviet Union and Mexico is enough. Furthermore, I have heard that many units of foreign volunteers are arriving, right?”
“Yes, the international brigades and civil militias help a lot and their courage is to be admired, but poor people fight with obsolete weapons. I just hope that together they manage to save Spain from fascism,” Felipe answered.
“The Second Spanish Republic was an illusory attempt to overcome the delay of two centuries in record time. The initial good intentions ran into the intransigence of some and the impatience of others. Catalonia, a stronghold of the new regime, suffered harshly from the consequences of its failure. I already saw myself with a Spanish federal state and within a Catalan Republic,” said Mariano.
“Yes, you are right, Catalonia has suffered a double failure, but don't think about it. There will come a day when your beloved land will once again achieve the autonomy it had: elections, its own government, a President of the Generalitat, the police officers, and Catalan will be taught again in schools.”
“Let's hope,” Mariano said sadly.
“Hopefully! Wars are long, I don't know if we will be able to see how this all ends.”
“In this world or in the next world, I hope with all my soul to celebrate with you the victory of democracy," Felipe told him, smiling.
Another afternoon, while they were having a drink under the vine on the Esperanza farm, Mariano began to complain about his ailments.
“I won't come to see you again if you complain so much," Felipe scolded.
“Do you mean I'm complaining too much?”
“Yes, especially when we are at your house, instead of Olivia's yard. I know that your back hurts and that you walk slowly, but you have to remember that you and I are still alive and we stand on our own, while there are people who at our age lie still in a bed or in the cemetery.”
“You are always so optimistic," Mariano replied.
“Mariano, do you remember my philosophy of life?” Felipe asked him.
“Yes, one of the first days we met, you told me about the fundamental points of your good life. Let's see if I remember!”
“Come on, your brain still works well!”
“One: we must appreciate what we have been given, without feeling unhappy when comparing ourselves with those who are richer or with those who have been luckier than us.” He thought for a moment and returned to the list - “Two: we have to fight for peaceful ways so that there are not so many inequalities in our land . . . and three . . . .”
“I'll help you, three: we must surround ourselves with good people, like you, and stay away from those who are selfish or evil," Felipe exclaimed.
“I don't know if I have been that good, but I haven't been evil,” Mariano answered.
“For me, you have been the best friend I have ever had. You have always been and continue to be an admirable person.”
“Don't be so serious man, I'm not as good as you say!” Mariano answered him, blushing a little.
“I would add point number four: we must be humble, learning from others, both directly and through books. Books have saved my life. Without them, I would already be dead or a jaded old man. Reading makes us overcome jealousy, envy, hatred, heartbreak, failures, selfishness, misfortunes, wars, inequalities, injustices, mourning, illnesses . . . and above all the fear of death.”
“How you exaggerate!” - and after a minute of silence Mariano asked him, “Are you afraid of death, Felipe?”
“Yes, like all people, but more than fear, I am curious to know what the other world will be like.”
“I'm really scared. Every time I go to Las Ovas or Pinar del Río, when I hear the bells ringing for a death as I’m passing near the church, I breathe a sigh of relief, thinking that fortunately they don't ring for me,” Mariano exclaimed.
“Don't be pessimistic. Why don't we do something?”
“Let's see what you have in store this time?”
“Let us leave it in writing that, when we die, we want to be buried without ceremonies, that the bells not ring to death and that we would like the people who have loved us to gather on our farm, to celebrate what we did together, all in the outdoors, with music and good food and drink.”
“You surprise me, but as always I agree with you. It would be a good farewell. I'm going to think about it,” Mariano told him, smiling.
Neither Mariano nor Felipe managed to see the political events that took place in Spain and Cuba during the following years. In 1939, the defeat of the Red Army was colossal, the last Spanish cities that supported the Republic fell one after another. Francisco Franco took power, a dictatorship was established, and a large part of the Republicans and their families had to flee to the south of France or Mexico. Repression, the repeal of rights and the lack of freedom in all fields, censorship, the abolition of political parties, the deprivation of free elections, and the prohibition of Catalan, Basque and Galician languages. This lasted until the death of the dictator, on November 20, 1975.
In Cuba, in 1940, Batista was elected president in relatively free and fair elections. During his official mandate, he approved various social reforms and began drafting Cuba's most liberal and democratic Constitution to date. But neither the liberal reforms nor Batista's optimism lasted long. He resigned after the 1944 elections and handed power to Ramón Grau San Martín. However, corruption and incompetence soon triumphed. Batista, aware of his former popularity, probably made a deal with the American mafia, promising to give them carte blanche in Cuba in exchange for a percentage of what they won from gambling, and prepared to return. On March 10, 1952, three months before the elections that Batista seemed likely to lose, he carried out a military coup. Harshly condemned by opposition politicians within Cuba, but recognized by the United States, Batista soon made it clear that his second foray into politics was not going to be as progressive as the first. He suspended several constitutional guarantees, including the right to strike.
After Batista's coup, a revolutionary circle was formed in Havana around the charismatic figure of Fidel Castro, a lawyer by profession and an excellent orator, who was going to run in the canceled 1952 elections. With the support of his younger brother Raúl and his faithful lieutenant Abel Santamaría, Fidel saw no alternative but to use force to free Cuba from its dictator and on January 1, 1959, he overthrew the Batista dictatorship. Cuba became a socialist state and nationalizations and expropriations were carried out. In the sixties, the Esperanza and Bonanza farms, like most of the properties on the island, were expropriated.
Gabriel, Mariano and Olivia's faithful servant, was a long-lived man. After the death of his masters, he left the little white house and went to live in Las Ovas after buying a home with the money that Mariano had left him as an inheritance. At seventy-five years old, Gabriel settled outside the farm for the first time and started a new life. He married María del Rosario, a mulatto woman from Pinar del Rio. One day, Gabriel timidly proposed to her and she jumped on his neck and covered him with kisses. María del Rosario was fifteen years younger than Gabriel, she was a plump and smiling woman. They had known each other for many years because every month, since she had become a widow, she brought a cart full of firewood to the farm. He lived peacefully with María del Rosario until he was ninety years old. He died at home a few years before Batista's military coup and Fidel Castro's Revolution. Leaning on a cane, he used to go to the Esperanza farm to visit the children and grandchildren of his masters, whom he loved as if they were his own.
EPILOGUE
Following the wishes of Mariano, who enjoyed music and dancing, Felipe hired a trio of musicians and sent a card to all of Mariano's family, friends, and acquaintances informing them of his friend's death and inviting them to a snack in the garden of the Esperanza farm on the following Saturday. Gabriel and Lucas placed several tables under the vine where the bunches of grapes hung ripe, ready to be picked. Gabriel cut some of them and left them on the white tablecloths of the tables that Lucas was setting.
Felipe, Olivia, and Nieves dressed up in their best clothes and went up to the stage, where the musicians were preparing the instruments. “Ladies and gentlemen, you have had the luck and honor of meeting Mariano Defaus Moragas. Now together we are going to say goodbye to him,” Felipe said.
“We will talk about him, but not with sadness,” said Olivia, reading the text from a folded paper that she took out of her pocket.’
“We will talk about what he enjoyed, about the people he loved, those he didn't love, what he did and what he felt, but never with sadness,” Nieves added.
“And little by little Mariano will be so much ours that it will not be necessary for us to talk about him to remember him. He will be a gesture, a word, a taste, a flowing look,” Felipe exclaimed.
At that moment, the fireworks exploded and the musicians with their guitars, maracas, and percussions began to play music - the popular Cuban music that Mariano liked the most.
Gabriel and the cook served good food and drinks for everyone. Lucas helped them as he laughed and cried at the same time. Mariano's grandchildren ran around the patio, while Nieves, Felipe, and Olivia talked about him with each of the guests.
That party was remembered for a long time, because those who attended said goodbye to the deceased in an unusual way - instead of grieving, they sang and danced to say goodbye, between smiles and tears.
Author's Note
The Cuban Cousins
Mariano's name had been dancing through my head since I was a child. In the summer, in the afternoons while everyone was taking a nap, I used to search the dresser drawers in the bedroom of Francisco Defaus Marés, my maternal grandfather. The drawer that stimulated my most curiosity was the first one, where there were notarial documents, which were mostly wills. I would get on a chair and take out the papers.
I was excited to read stories and those documents contained many. Of the oldest ones, from the 18th century, I understood almost nothing because the ink was faded and the handwriting was twisted and indecipherable; however, those from the 19th century were written with clearer handwriting and were easier to read. In one from the beginning of the 19th century, a certain Mariano Defaus Segarra appeared. But the one that caught my attention the most was a will from 1887 in which my great-grandfather Francisco and his siblings, Mariano, María, and Isidro Defaus Moragas, were mentioned. Everything went to the universal heir and the other children were left with very little. Teresa Moragas, the wife, was left with nothing. In other notarial papers from 1898, the year José Defaus Ballesté died, Mariano's name and that of his brothers also appeared.
At the beginning of the sixties, when I was five or six years old, I got sick every now and then with angina and had to stay in bed for several days, so I made up extraordinary stories. My favorites were trips across the seas; my bed was my ship. When I rowed my boat with a mast, I couldn't have imagined that in the last century a brother of my great-grandfather had gone to sea.
In my immediate family, there were neither travelers nor adventurers. We had all been, and continue to be, quiet and sedentary people. For centuries, from what I have been able to find out, most of my ancestors were born and died in the town of Malgrat. Until a few months ago, no one suspected that one of them embarked and went overseas. However, in the Defaus house there was no document that attested to this. Nobody told us about the relative who went to Cuba.
At eighteen, I left the town to study at the University in Barcelona, and at twenty-one I moved to Italy. For a long time I forgot about my ancestors, until one day, when I was about fifty years old and still living abroad, I wrote a story about an episode that my father, who at that time was a widower and over ninety years old, told me about my mother's grandparents.
At the end of February 2023, I received a message from María Rosa Comas Defaus, one of my cousins, who lives in Malgrat, telling me that she had met Jordi Defaus, another cousin of ours, on the street. Jordi told M. Rosa that a Cuban girl had written him a message on her social networks, telling him that we had common ancestors. I wrote impatiently to Jordi.
My cousin told me that the Cuban girl, Lilién Catalá Defaus, was the great-great-granddaughter of our great-grandfather's brother and that she was moving the matter of her ancestor from Malgrat, to obtain papers for the expatriation of her mother Lidia and her sisters Elena, Nelida, and Felicita. I immediately wrote to her through her social networks:
“Hello, I am Josefina Privat Defaus, a cousin of Jordi Defaus. I was born in Malgrat, but I have lived in Italy for many years. Through Jordi I have learned that we have common ancestors. I am very excited that Mariano Defaus Moragas, your mother's great-grandfather, was the brother of Francisco Defaus Moragas, my great-grandfather (also Jordi's). I didn't know that a member of our family had gone to Cuba.”
“Hello, I'm happy to meet you. Oh! It must be late in Italy, there is a time difference.”
“Don't worry, it's not late, it's ten at night, plus I'm on permanent vacation, I retired a year ago.”
“How nice that you wrote to me! Here it is five in the afternoon. Jordi has been special to me. I was very excited to meet you and now the same thing happens to me with you.”
“Yes, Jordi is very kind, he told me something about your great-great-grandfather Mariano, but I would like to know more.”
“Well, you are going to love the story, I am going to tell it to you: Mariano Defaus arrived in Cuba at the age of 17 in 1873 and… when Fidel Castro's revolution triumphed, Mariano's family lost the mansion and the lands, when they were expropriated by the new government's law.”
“Are there many descendants of Mariano in Cuba?”
“The Defaus family is large, but the Defaus surname is unique in Cuba. All the Defaus in the country are family…”
“I can't believe it and we don't know anything.”
“I can't wait to tell my mother and my aunts, who are Mariano's great-granddaughters, about you.”
“I'm also dying to talk to my brothers about you.”
“I have learned from Jordi that the house where Mariano was born still exists.”
“Yes, but many renovations have been made, I think the façade is from the first years of the twentieth century.”
“I am glad that the house remains in the family because it has a very great sentimental value.”
“We still have a very old wooden virgin, I will send you a photo.”
“I would love to see it. Always keep it. Memories are invaluable.”
“Mariano was very brave, walking away from his family at the age of seventeen.”
“I imagine how much he must have missed his mother's hug, the company of his brothers and sisters. The sea that he loved so much . . . ”
“Do you know why he left Malgrat?”
“Mariano told his children that he came to Cuba because he did not want to enlist in the army. I suppose that in a certain way he did it to preserve his life.”
“Perhaps there is another reason, it seems strange to me that Mariano, the first-born and heir to the Defaus family properties, went to Cuba.”
“I don't know . . . we'll try to find out together. This search began because I wanted my mother to recover her Spanish nationality, which corresponds to her by blood, so that she can travel and visit her sister Nélida and the family that resides in the United States . . . And it turns out that I ended up finding something more valuable.”
“I'm going to ask my brothers and cousins, see if they know anything else. I'll write to you if something comes up.”
“Thank you. I have managed to connect with the family in the past and I think we will be able to maintain communication and get to know each other. That makes me very happy.”
“Me too.”
“I have contacted the Malgrat archive, with María Teresa Gibert, a woman who has helped me a lot to obtain the certificates that attest to Mariano's Catalan origin.”
“I think my sister knows Maria Teresa, she is a cousin of her daughter-in-law. I'm going to ask her since I have lived in Italy for more than forty-five years, but every summer I return to Malgrat. In July I will go to see M.Teresa, I want to meet her.”
“Very good. For now a big hug.”
“Yes, we'll continue talking, another hug from me.”
That same night I went to look at my social media and found a message from Lidia, Lilién's mother. She also told me that she was looking for members of her great-grandfather's Catalan family and that she was sending messages to everyone with the last name Defaus.
All my life I have been complaining that my family has been monotonous, in terms of genealogy. On both my father's and mother's sides, all my ancestors came from the same town - Malgrat. For centuries, they intermarried and never left the region. That's why it was exciting for me to discover that we had family in Cuba.
“I have Cuban cousins and no one told me about it!” I said happily to my husband that night before we went to bed.
The next day, I called my sister. Upon the death of my parents, she inherited the mansion and all the papers of the Defaus family.
“María Carmen, as far as you know, do we have a Defaus family in Cuba?”’
“I don't think so, our mother would have told us.”
“Well, a Cuban girl wrote to me, telling me that she descends from the brother of our great-grandfather Francisco,” I told her.
“I can't believe it! Are you sure that girl isn't confused?”
“The girl has evidence that Mariano Defaus Moragas arrived in Havana in 1873 and that he came from Malgrat.”
“This sounds fishy! If everything is true, Mariano's story could be a secret that our family has hidden well and didn't want to reveal to anyone,” my sister said.
“We have to find out!”
That same day, María Carmen went to our childhood house, which had been closed for several years, to see if she could find any clue to solve this enigma. Her son and daughter-in-law helped her. At the bottom of a brass box on a shelf in the dining room display case they found a photograph of a man of about thirty years old, with deep eyes, light eyes, a beard and mustache, short and wavy hair, perhaps reddish, with a dark jacket, a white shirt and bowtie. That sepia-colored portrait had been taken by a photographer from Havana, in a photography studio called J. A. Suarez and company, at 64 O'Reilly Street. There was no date on the photo. She and I deduced that it was Mariano Defaus Moragas. Who else could it be?
“Why didn't anyone realize that the photograph came from Havana?” I asked my sister.
“They had not noticed it because it was hidden at the bottom of the box where our grandparents kept the photos and over the years those who knew Mariano's story died,” my sister said.
She also found the will from 1887 in which José Defaus Ballesté left his assets to his children. It was the same will that I had leafed through as a child.
I wrote to Lilién again telling her about our findings and she told me that her research had also obtained good results, thanks to María Teresa Gibert, a volunteer from the group Friends of the Malgrat archive.
I did not know María Teresa; however, it did not take long for me to meet her through the messages she sent me on my social networks:
“Hello, I'm María Teresa, you don't know me but I'm from Malgrat and I know your sister and your sister-in-law. I am a volunteer at the town Archive and I love genealogical studies. We have a common bond: your Cuban cousins. Lilién wrote to me asking for information about Mariano Defaus Moragas, her mother's great-grandfather. I could have given her instructions on how to move, as I always do, but she was so kind and so polite that I had to say: I'll take care of it. I learned from Lilién that you are writing to each other.”
“Hello, nice to meet you. Yes, I'm writing to Lilién. And she told me that you found what you were looking for.”
“It was difficult for me because when Mariano was born (1856) there was no civil registry and I had to consult the parish books, but unfortunately many were burned during the Civil War.”
“What bad luck! And what did you do?”
“Mossen Salvador de Malgrat, helped me, telling me, “consult the archives of the diocese of Girona. If Mariano was baptized, he should also be confirmed and that is done by the bishop.’”
“What a good idea! And you got it?”
“Yes, Mariano was confirmed by the bishop of Girona, I also found him in the census of January 1873, the last year in which he lived with his family in Malgrat. In the following years he no longer appears.”
“I'm glad you found it.”
“But the cousins also asked for something else, which was the most difficult to obtain: a certificate from the court declaring that in those years Spain did not have a civil registry. In Malgrat they didn't want to do it for me, I had to ask Madrid for it.”
“Oh my God, so much paperwork!”
“Luckily, now they have everything. They can now apply for Spanish nationality.”
“You have done a great job. The Cuban cousins will be grateful to you all their lives.”
“I don't know why I embarked on that matter, something inside me told me that they needed my help.”
“You did very well. I also believe that we have to follow our instincts and help others.”
I met María Teresa personally in the summer of 2023 and she told me that she really put great effort into requesting and achieving what seemed impossible. Once the four copies of the confirmation certificate were obtained, they were sent to Lidia, one of Mariano's great-granddaughters, not by mail but through a Cuban person who was in Madrid at that time, since the cousins were afraid that the documents would get lost in the meanderings of the Cuban post offices. The cousins submitted the request to the Spanish consulate in Havana, but are still waiting for a response.
Lilién is a thirty-something Cuban woman full of enthusiasm. It was she who created a WhatsApp group, to bring together all the Defaus scattered around the world. First there were six of us, Lilién's three aunts, her mother, her and me, then the Catalan cousins, Jordi, M.Rosa, Teresa and Montse and other Cuban cousins, Mariela, Idania, Dinorah, Drialis, Nydia, Amy, joined us. Wendy, Adilen . . . and some cousins: Emilio, Osvaldo, Juan and Gilberto. Now there are twenty-five of us in the group, all descendants of the spouses Teresa Moragas Gibert and José Defaus Ballesté, married in the seventies of the nineteenth century. Most of them live in Cuba; however, there are also family members who live in the United States and Catalonia. Sometimes it is a bit complicated to talk to so many people. At first it was dizzying when we all wrote at the same time, but now we have learned and we are more organized. María Teresa Gibert is also part of our group, and after several genealogical studies she discovered that she is also a distant cousin of ours.
The day I wrote to Lilién I knew that there was a story to tell in my life. Each of the Cuban cousins have been giving me stories and anecdotes that their ancestors passed from mouth to mouth. María Teresa, consulting the archive for hours and hours, has helped me reconstruct the life, customs and most important events of some inhabitants of Malgrat at the end of the 19th century.
In the WhatsApp group, in addition to the stories of our parents and grandparents (Cubans and Catalans), old photographs of Malgrat, Las Ovas, Pinar del Río and the Sarrá pharmacy in Havana, we have shared videos of the area where the Esperanza estate stood (today only the mansion's large water tank remains) and images of the Las Ovas station where Mariano took the train, which unfortunately a few years ago was destroyed by a tornado, songs by the Cuban singer Rigo Duarte describing the town of Las Ovas, old postcards, municipal documents, funeral reminders, etc.
I don't know how to tell you why I started writing Mariano's story; however, I know that something inside me prompted me to do it. The reason may be contained in the words of a character in a book by Care Santos, a contemporary Catalan writer: Novels serve to bring back the dead, to reunite us with everything we lost.
You may wonder why I wrote the story in Spanish and not in Catalan. Here are some reasons: not everyone to whom I dedicated the story understands Catalan, and Mariano, from the age of seventeen, without forgetting his mother tongue, adopted Spanish as his own language and in my imagination I heard him pronounce the sweet Cuban Spanish. All my primary and higher studies were done during the time of the Franco dictatorship. That is why it is easier for me to write in Spanish, which is the official language. Catalan was never taught to us at school. In any case, Catalan is my native language and I will continue to love it all my life; You have to know that as soon as I finish the translation of this story into Italian, I will start the Catalan version.
For several months, every morning I have woken up early thinking about Mariano, his parents, brothers, wife, friends, etc., and after breakfast I have sat down at my desk to write down his exploits. Once a chapter was finished, I sent it to the Defaus cousins' WhatsApp group, about one every two weeks.
Mariano and the characters around him (some real and others from my fantasy) have returned, they have accompanied me week after week. I hope that you, those of you who have finished reading this story, have also been captivated.
