Roser Guàrdia Gabarrós

Tents in an unidentified refugee camp. Most of the refugees had to live in deplorable conditions in the French internment camps DEPARTMENT OF THE EASTERN PYRENEES.
Separated by fencing, the added drama of many families in exile DEPARTMENTAL ARCHIVES OF THE EASTERN PYRENEES.
Tents in an unidentified refugee camp. Most of the refugees had to live in deplorable conditions in the French internment camps DEPARTMENTAL ARCHIVES OF THE EASTERN PYRENEESIRÓ / DEPARTMENTAL ARCHIVES OF THE EASTERN PYRENEES IN AN UNIDENTIFIED REFUGEE CAMP. MOST OF THE REFUGEES HAD TO LIVE IN DEPLORABLE CONDITIONS IN THE FRENCH INTERNMENT CAMPS DEPARTMENT OF THE EASTERN PYRENEES.

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.