Roser Guàrdia Gabarrós

Roser was born to Pere Guàrdia Orts and Lluïsa Gabarrós Mauri. The fa­ther, mo­bilised with the re­pub­li­can army, had been wounded and taken pris­oner in Foradada, La Noguera. After hear­ing noth­ing about him, the fam­ily de­cide to leave Gar­riguella (Alt Em­pordà) and go into exile around Feb­ru­ary 4 or 5, 1939. With un­cer­tainty re­main­ing about the fate of Pere, Lluïsa and lit­tle Roser, along with what was left of the fam­ily, were in­terned in the camp of Argelès, where they be­came se­ri­ously ill from ty­phoid fever. Evac­u­ated in all prob­a­bil­ity to Per­pig­nan, lit­tle Roser, just over a year and a half old, did not re­cover and died. Se­ri­ously ill, Lluïsa could not say good­bye, and did not even know the fate of her daugh­ter until days later, after over­com­ing the ill­ness.

Eighty years later, the fam­ily traced the ceme­tery where lit­tle Roser can be found buried in North­ern Cat­alo­nia. The clue, a sin­gle pho­to­graph of the mother, Lluïsa, well again and with her hair still short due to the dis­ease, ac­com­pa­nied by her grand­mother, Mercè Mauri López, taken in this place be­fore her grave in the sum­mer of 1939. Fam­ily records in­di­cate that the lit­tle girl was buried in a ceme­tery in a vil­lage near Argelès or Per­pig­nan, some ver­sions point­ing to the Voló ceme­tery as a pos­si­bil­ity.