Ramon Fígols Costa

Rosa Serra Salmauri, a res­i­dent of Gironella (Berguedà), who died of nat­ural causes in the Sant Josep de Puig-Reig Res­i­dence at the be­gin­ning of 2020, held on to the let­ters that her aunt Maria Salmauri Puig had re­ceived from her part­ner Ramon Fígols Costa for years. He was in­terned and died in the Bram camp (Aude de­part­ment) in the sum­mer of 1939.

Ramon Fígols and Maria Salmauri, to­gether with his sis­ter, Maria Fígols, were ac­tive mem­bers of the CNT (the Na­tional Con­fed­er­a­tion of Labour, a con­fed­er­a­tion of an­ar­cho-syn­di­cal­ist labour unions) in Berguedà and heav­ily in­volved in trade unions in the Alt Llo­bre­gat re­gion in the 1930s. He was a sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the Singer com­pany, while the two women were weavers in El Llo­bre­gat. They were fairly ac­tive within the union, al­though more in co­or­di­na­tion than lead­ing the move­ment.

Ramon Fígols fought in the Columna Terra i Llib­er­tat mili­tia, sur­viv­ing the war and cross­ing the bor­der dur­ing the re­treat. He was in­terned in the Bram con­cen­tra­tion camp (Aude), in hut 101 in sec­tor F, where he fell ill and died in the in­fir­mary, pos­si­bly from pneu­mo­nia, in Oc­to­ber 1939. His let­ters bear fur­ther tes­ti­mony to the ap­palling con­di­tions suf­fered by the Re­pub­li­can ex­iles in the French in­tern­ment camps. De­tails of the stay in the in­fir­mary, re­la­tion­ships with col­leagues and the evo­lu­tion of his ill­ness, as well as the ef­forts Maria made to free Ramon and his col­leagues from the camp, are some of the points of greater in­ter­est in the cor­re­spon­dence. Ramon died in the in­fir­mary after he was de­nied a vis­i­ta­tion per­mit and his at­tempts to ob­tain a leave of ab­sence had failed.

Maria Salmauri and Maria Fígols moved into a house in Montclar, owned by Mme Anglan­tina Vaegsse, where they earned a liv­ing sewing until they re­turned to Cat­alo­nia and to Gironella in 1949. Dur­ing their stay in Montclar, they also car­ried out co­or­di­na­tion tasks for other re­pub­li­can ex­iles.

fea­ture his­tor­i­cal mem­ory