Speech by President of the Government at Mexico College

Madam President of Mexico College, public officials, members of the Government of Mexico, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends,

In 1939, at the end of the Spanish Civil War, Spain exiled almost half a million people, people with names, with ordinary lives, with a home, who lived in streets where they woke up every day and which they were forced to leave. Some of them did so forever.

I can think of no worse punishment for a human being that that of abandoning the strength of your people, of your friends and family. Abandoning the environment in which you have grown up. Abandoning your profession, your goods and your customs. Abandoning, in many cases, your own language, your whole identity. That is why Spain's debt to Mexico can never be repaid, because in that terrible time of exile, Mexico welcomed tens of thousands of Spaniards fleeing from their country with open arms. And Mexico asked them, "Do you need a new homeland? We will offer it to you".

Luis Buñuel, the great Spanish filmmaker had no interest in Latin America in his youth. When the Civil War was over, in fact, when he was forced into exile, he decided to go to the United States. He was living there, waiting for his final residency papers when he was invited to Mexico to make a film. And so he came here, and immediately fell in love with the country. He abandoned the idea of living in Los Angeles and definitively settled down in Mexico City. He spent almost 20 years of his life in this country and even ended up considering himself a Mexican. He died here.

In his memoirs he textually states, "Mexico is a true country, in which the inhabitants live on impulse, with a yearning to learn and move forwards which is rarely found in other parts. In addition, they are extremely friendly people, with a sense of friendship and hospitality that has made Mexico, since the Spanish Civil War until the coup d'état of Pinochet in Chile, a safe haven".

Even now, in these times of turbulent migration we are seeing, Mexico continues to be a welcoming land that it is possible to fall in love with. A land which, even when you arrive fleeing from persecution of misery, is consoling. No wall will be able to change that.

Spanish exile in Mexico has one bright side to it, which is that some of our best poets, creators and intellectuals settled down here, although the exile principally brought to this land agricultural workers, industrial workers, housewives, small landowners, scientists, people from the liberal professions, teachers and doctors of different ideologies. Let's not contaminate this exile with romanticism. Exile is a traumatic experience. It is always terrible, although thanks to it some of the most beautiful verse has been created.

The great Republican exile of 1939, the last of the great exiles in Spain's history commemorates its 80th anniversary this year. Between 1936 and 1939, Spain went through one of the toughest periods in its history. The Civil War tested the international order and showed the weaknesses of the Society of Nations. We want to see a world in which this cannot happen; a world in which the United Nations and multilateralism - which is being brought into question at the moment - has the force to impose prudence and to prevent any warlike instincts. That is why we like the European Union, one of the most ambitious and beneficial political projects of our time.

At that time, this was unfortunately not possible. While the people defended Spanish democracy with few resources, very few countries showed their solidarity with the Spanish Republic; among them the most outstanding voice was that of Mexico, which raised its voice on the international stage to ask for support for the Republican Government of the then-Prime Minister, Manuel Azaña. Mexico's solidarity at that time of war was admirable. It offered support and supplies and acted as a diplomatic broker to enable channels for procurements that were impossible for the Spanish people. Its people joined the International Brigades to fight in a land that was alien to them with the aim of defeating fascism. And it took in the so-called "Children of Morelia", who fled from a traumatic conflict in which the civilian population was worse affected than in any other war that had gone before. On the one hand, cruelty, barbarism and senselessness; but on the other, generosity and a warm welcome.

It is never easy to start over in a new country. Those Spaniards who came here, deprived of almost anything, settled down in certain central neighbourhoods. Today there is a street called Vía del Exilio Español [Spanish Exile Way], perpendicular to Alameda Central; and in that street, the families organised themselves to get on with life and survive. Often the women - these brave women of the exile - were the first to earn an income to rebuild their lost homes, to maintain their good spirits, to convey their memories and to maintain alive their yearning to return.

Mexico City has many signs of those times, some bars in the centre became focal points for political meetings for Spaniards to debate the war and bad fortune was wished upon Franco. Spaniards of all types gathered at these meetings: artists, writers, servicemen, militants and manual labourers, all united in the cause of liberty. The government of Lázaro Cárdenas also made possible an enlightening idea: to create a centre in Mexico that would allow a good number of Spanish university lecturers and intellectuals to pursue their task during the torment of the Spanish Civil War. Hence, in 1938, La Casa de España [House OF Spain] was founded, the forerunner of this Mexico College that hosts us today. The great Mexican essayist, Alfonso Reyes, headed up the institution until his death, which welcomed figures of the stature of Luis Recasens, León Felipe, José Moreno Villa, José Gaos, Enrique Díez-Canedo, among many others. Mexico was indeed a homeland, a true homeland.

Luis Cernuda, another of the great poets of the Generation of 27, who was also forced to leave Spain, arrived here after spending several years in Great Britain. And he wrote the following about himself, which I quote textually, "The feeling of being a stranger that pursued you around the places you lived in the past was finally put to rest here in Mexico. You were in your place, or somewhere that could be yours, and you were in harmony with everything, or almost everything, and the things around you, the air, the light, the views, the creatures were your friends. You lived as if reborn, as if you had taken a great weight off your shoulders".

Mexico permitted thousands of Spaniards to be reborn, to start their lives again in an environment and with people who were their friends, as Luis Cernuda said. That debt can never be repaid. Or it can be paid, but only with something called gratitude. The cultural fruit of the Republican exile in this country was prodigious. Apart from this Mexico College, we should remember the Spanish Athenaeum, which will have been in existence for 70 years in 2019, home to an extraordinary archive and library. Lectures were given within its walls and chats and exhibitions were organised, which were fundamental for bringing Spanish democratic culture to Mexican society. Those exiled founded their own publishing houses and collaborated closely with other Mexican publishers, such as the Fondo de Cultura Económica [Economic Culture Fund], which still have essential translations. Those books, which entered Spain clandestinely, contributed to fuel the conscience of Spaniards at home, because those exiled Spaniards did not look away for a moment from what was happening in Spain. They had two homelands: one here and one there; the new one and the one they had lost. They sent money to support political prisoners and reported the murders and persecutions under the dictatorship.

Luis Buñuel, María Zambrano, Max Aub, León Felipe, Luis Cernuda and Manuel Altolaguirre were some of the illustrious Spaniards exiled who chose Mexico to live out this second life. Some of them, like Buñuel and Cernuda, died here and will remain here forever. But, I will say it again; let's not be romantic about exile. It is always terrible. We can see today those people currently exiled from so many countries that live dashed lives, migrants that flee from misery, persecution and violence. And let's remember that this is what happened to many Spaniards in 1939.

Recently the situation in Venezuela has once again been in the spotlight, with many arguments but there is one argument that cannot be repeated, which is exile. No governor is virtuous and no governor is legitimate if his citizens are forced to leave their own country. It doesn't matter what doctrinal reasons may be used or the interests at play, forced immigration and exile are neither acceptable nor sustainable.

Because democracy - we would do well to always remember this - is not only an electoral system, although it is as well. Democracy is the system that respects minorities and allows its citizens to establish an autonomous and free life project for all. If these citizens are forced to leave and go elsewhere in search of a plate of food or for liberty, as has been happening in Venezuela for years now, democracy breaks down.

In 1939 it was Spain. In 2019, there are other flashpoints of exile, unfortunately, all around the planet: Syrians fleeing from war, Africans fleeing from hunger, Venezuelans fleeing from a regime that is hostile to them, Central Americans fleeing from all of this at once. They are people, human beings that leave their homes, that sometimes leave behind them those that they love, their families and their children; they risk their lives, they don't know whether they will once again walk in the land they were born in. They are people, not players in a geo-strategy game. They are human beings; they do not have barcodes or are pieces that can be exchanged.

I am a politician and I believe in politics. But only if it is capable of looking at everything in all its human dimensions, if it seeks to improve people's lives, if it remembers every day that many people at any given time are forced to abandon their homeland to go elsewhere.

The government I head up wishes to recover the memory of the Republicans exiled from Spain. For decades, a handful of researchers have dedicated their time to showing the legacy of those men and women, and now is the right time for the State to pay tribute to this exile and do everything possible to show this to today's Spaniards, particularly to the young people of our country.

I am aware that this has happened too late. Most of those compatriots are no longer among us, but their deeds, their example and their works remain, and have left an indelible hallmark. Now is the time to ask for their forgiveness, to acknowledge their sacrifice and return them to their rightful place in Spain's history.

Today, throughout the world there are those who are nostalgic for these terrible times, for exclusionary nationalism, for a lack of communication and for intolerance; also in Spain there are once again those who are nostalgic for the Franco regime. They are committed to restricting the rights of women and of those who think differently from them. They are committed to closing off Spain, so that no-one can find their second life opportunity there. They are committed, in short, to advocating the very worse of our history.

Today, when we remember those Spanish men and women who came from their homeland to this new homeland, when we relive that collective horror that the Spanish people starred in as a country, I call on our democratic memory to move forward rather than backwards. I call on the overriding need to remember, to always remember; at school, in politics, in civil society, without bitterness, because bitterness clouds judgement. But also without wavering.

We must remember because those who suffered in exile deserve this act of justice; but we must remember, above all, because we want this to never happen again; anywhere, in any country. Never again.

I wish to close with a symbolic image that I found very emotional and which sums up the debt that democratic Spain owes to Mexico, which is the following anecdote: Manuel Azaña, the legitimate Prime Minister of the Spanish Republic was exiled to France, as you know, and in the summer of 1940, while ill and persecuted by the German forces that had occupied vast swathes of France by that time, was taken by ambulance to Montauban. The plenipotentiary minister of Mexico, Luis Ignacio Rodríguez Taboada, went to visit him there, where he became, in those last few months of the life of the Prime Minister of the Spanish Republic, Manuel Azaña, his friend and his protector. When Azaña died, in November of that year, the French authorities of Petain banned the placing of the Republican flag on his casket so as not to provoke France or the Nazis. So, Rodríguez Taboada then spoke a few words to the French prefect that history will never forget, and with that I will close of this speech. He said to him the following, "He will be covered by the flag of Mexico. It will be our privilege. Hope for the republicans and a painful lesson for you".

Thank you.

Non official translation