Literary review: "La mujer del maquis" (The wife of the maquis) by Ana R. Cañil

Title: La mujer del maquis

Writer: Ana R. Cañil

Publisher: Espasa

Year: 2008

Pages: 424

IBSN-13: 9788467032864

Price: 8.5€ (Tapa blanda en Amazon)

Mark: 10/10

SYNOPSIS

Cantabria, 1957. Paco Bedoya, the last maqui, died because of the bullets of the Civil Guard. Nineteen years have passed since Franco won the war, nineteen years during which a handful of men, with the support of the people of some lost valleys, kept their fight for the freedom. This is the story of those men and women that suffered tortures, imprisonment and repression. Still today fear inhabit in the corners of the manor houses, the cracks of the walls, under the moss and the verdigris that cover the ashlar stones. The fear, the fear… And the shame. They are willing to recover a painful and shaddy time where there were love and passion, solidarity and silent memories. It is too the history of the love between Paco Bedoya, the last maqui, and Mercedes San Honorio, two young people that fell in love before turning twenty years and that had a child, they had to live their love separated and had to dream that someday they could meet again. Ana R. Cañil, based on a great documentation and with real testimonies, have written a tale that overflows with emotion, passion and epic, in where the protagonists talk in first person making their history everybody’s.

PERSONAL ASSESSMENT

JUSTIFICATION

Many years ago, when I was in high school, I heard about this book and it seemed suuuper interesting and I wanted to read it. Its content fascinated me, the history about the maquis (people that went to the mountains and forests to fight against fascism) in Cantabria told by acquaintances, family and her ‘wife’, the ‘wife’ of one of the most famous and the last Spanish maqui, Paco Bedoya. Over time, I forgot the title and so much I tried I couldn’t find the book, until this summer. Actually I don’t remember how I run into it but, being that cheap, I didn’t hesitate to buy it.

PLOT

This book talks about the life of Paco Bedoya from the point of view of his closest people.

It starts telling us how his life in Serdio (Val de San Vicente, Cantabria) was, how he met Leles in a romeria and they fell in love, how she got pregnant and her family didn’t allow them to be together and how Paco escaped to see her in the distance. Everything was very idylic until the Civil War broke out. But the worst was not the war but the post-war. The civil guard started to retaliate, the maquis were looking for intermediaries, and the family of Paco started to get involved with them, the maquis -the intermediaries were only responsible of giving them food and passing letters from the maquis to their families, not all of the maquis were fighters, lots of them were ordinary people fleeing from the repression and harassment of the Francoist police-.

Besides telling us the life of Paco, it also tells us the history of her ‘wife’, Leles. How she lived the imprisonment of Paco and his life as a maqui until his death, her exile in South America and how her and their child lived all of this.

WRITING STYLE

The book is made of copied letters and transcriptions of interviews with no modification and a reconstruction of the events based on everything people told her and the historical facts. The union of this texts and the writing style of Ana R. Cañil and the numerous photos inserted help us to visualize the place, the people, and makes us submerge in their history. We suffer with Leles, we got angry as Paco and, in the end, it left us with a taste of injustice during a few days.

GENERAL COMMENT

The story of the maquis has always fascinated me, how they went to the mountains and forests and fought against the injustices, lots of them until their death. It is more fascinating when you know the orography and the climate they had to face in the forests, the high mountains, the frosts in the winters… This book tells us the history of the maquis from a new point of view, from the point of view of the woman who suffered it, the mother of Paco, his sister, his cousins, his wife. His ‘wife’. This book has two big stories, the injustice and betrayal that Paco suffered -his only crime was helping the maquis giving them food and letters, he never killed nor tortured anybody- and the difficult love story between Paco and Leles. I cried a lot with the life and betrayal of Paco, he was a good man, he was no evil, he just wanted to help his family and after all that was done to him and his family it seems to me totally normal what he did. I felt that betrayal as if it was done to me, Paco didn’t deserve it.

Regarding the relationship between Paco and Leles, I have never felt before so pure a love expressed in a book, a love so pure and injust, estranged by the family, war and exile. When Leles got pregnant they could see each other two or three times more, until Leles had to leave for Cuba hoping to meet Paco there when he was released from prison, so they could live a life together with their child. We can feel that love in each letter, even Leles, after marrying a man in Cuba, admitted that her only and true love was always Paco.

This is a heartbreaking story about the injustices of the Francoism, of the dictatorship (because the worst was not the war), and of the pure and impossible love. It is a very interesting but sad reading. A must-read.

-Saru.