PRESIDENT’S COLUMN

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: february 2022 :: RMTnews 25 take one of them away. Those they took away never came back, so when they came for my uncle Rafael, my father knew he would never see him again, they were going to kill him. My father was lucky they only sent him to prison and barred him from working on the railways ever again. When my grandmother went to the prison to find them, she was told that Rafael wasn’t there any more. The poor woman went everywhere she could think of to ask where he might be, she spent her whole life searching for him. He was 26 when he disappeared, even today we don’t know where they killed him”. Franco even created a special police unit dedicated to informing on railway workers, to root out any possible opposition. They amassed a total of 120,000 files full of reports detailing railway workers' friendships and everyday movements. Until 1957, many Spanish railways were being built and maintained by forced labour battalions, often made up of political prisoners. In 1940 there were over 9,000 forced labourers slaving on Franco's railways. But of course the repression was even worse for the thousands of women who had worked on the railways. Over 4,500 of them were purged for having the wrong political loyalties. The fascists punished women who deviated from the regime’s norms more severely than men. They would also be punished if their husbands or sons defied the regime. All women workers were punished just for being women. Franco wanted women to be «esposas y madres», wives and mothers and nothing else. The daughter of one victim described how her mother, now 93, was sacked from the railway for the crime of getting married. She said: “In those day’s women didn’t have a glass ceiling, it was cement, and when they married they were forced to resign. They could only return to work if their husbands died, or deserted the wife without good reason. With the return of democracy in 1978 my mother was finally allowed to return to work in Renfe”. At the recent unveiling of a commemorative statue to the railway victims, the Socialist Transport Minister, José Luis Ábalos, spoke movingly about the importance of remembering the impact fascism had on the everyday lives of working people. "Remembering hurts, but it heals. What really destroys us as a society is forgetting and silence. (in Spain) We tried to quickly close a painful chapter in our history to embrace democracy. We believed sincerely that reconciliation consisted in not looking back and we were wrong. We were unjust because we didn’t want to see the open wounds. Only by looking the past full in the face will we be able to have the future we deserve. It's time that the victims of Franco stopped paying the bill for our democracy". Spain is still struggling to come to terms with its history. It's a political struggle almost as polarised as the civil war itself. The new right governing Madrid is intent on retaining street names that celebrate the Division Azul, the troops and volunteers Franco sent to fight alongside the SS on the Eastern front. That’s why it is so important we in Wales take part in commemorations like this one, to keep alive the memory of those brave Welsh comrades who fought so hard in the hope that the working people of Spain may have had different memories and so much better ones.